


Let's Give a Tree Some Roots

by AlexKingOfTheDamned



Category: Left 4 Dead
Genre: I don't think that counts, M/M, Nick being an asshole, Sort of incest, Step-cest?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:10:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexKingOfTheDamned/pseuds/AlexKingOfTheDamned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By chance, Ellis is reunited with his ex-step-brother Francis, and they decide to travel together. They grow nearer to one another and then something flips a switch and they cross a line that no sorts of brothers were ever meant to cross.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously. This is your warning right now. If you're a big fan Nick as a person, run the fuck away from this story. You will not be happy.

"Shit...not good." Francis muttered. "Bill, your leg is totaled."  
Bill looked grimly ahead, clasping a cigarette between his thin lips. He avoided looking down at his shredded right leg.

He had been pounced on by a hunter. And normally the rest of them, Francis, Zoey and Louis would have gotten it off him in time.

But at that particular moment, Francis had been dodging a charger, Zoey had been avoiding a jockey and Louis had been fighting not to get puked on by a boomer.  
Leaving Bill to get the hell torn out of his leg before he himself managed to shoot the damn thing.  
  
"Then leave me here." Bill said grimly. "And if you're halfway decent, you'll shoot me first so I don't get attacked and shredded."

"Bill, we're not leaving you here!!" Zoey said.

"Well what else would you plan on doin'?" Bill snapped at her. "I can't walk, that's for damn sure. I'd just slow you down to where you're headed."  
Zoey squeezed her eyes shut as she looked away. But she knew he was right. They all knew he was right.  
  
"I can't do it." she said, her voice tearing up a bit. "So don't even look at me."  
She hurried around a corner and pressed her palm to her mouth and her back to the wall, trying to keep herself from crying.

They were all practically a family. Though they had been strangers when they started into the whole thing, they had learned about each other and grown steadily closer and closer, loving each other in their own twisted ways.

Zoey had learned that Bill had a son he'd had to put down because he came charging at him shrieking and spewing blood out his nose.

Francis had learned exactly what entailed of the war Bill had been in, listening to war stories until Bill had to really think to tell him a new one.

Louis had learned that Bill's wife managed to escape, and that's the main reason he was fighting so hard to get the hell out of dodge.  


And now, he had to be put down himself.  
Zoey couldn't even stand it.  
  
 _BANG_  
  
She gave out, weeping silently into her hand.

Not that she'd ever let any of the guys see her like this.  
She had to be strong, hell she _was_ strong.  
But this...  
It was like losing her daddy all over again.

Three blocks down there was another war on.  The infected undead were pouring out of every crack and every hole in the ruins of the New Orleans streets.  The four survivors on this end were standing with their backs pressed against each other.  The humans were surrounded on all sides by the living dead, screaming at the top of their blood filled lungs.

 

The hill-billy’s shot gun rang out around the streets, splattering blood and decaying flesh across their faces.  The barrel clicked and a shell flew out of his gun as he reloaded quickly raising the weapon back up to his eye and fired again.

 

The mutated flesh-eaters howled from every corner of the city as it seemed.  The white-suited man by his side cursed under his breath, quickly reloading the AK47 in his sweaty palms before opening fire with a hail of bullets on the roaring horde.

 

The only girl in the group unloaded several clips from her pistols, taking down several of the monstrous infected.

 

Suddenly the air went still as the high pitched beeping attracted the attention of nearly every screeching zombie.  The beeping rang out again as the jerry-rigged pipe bomb flew out of the hands of the large black man.  As soon as the device fled his palm, he wiped the sweat from his brow and turned away.

 

Beep.

 

The horde went silent.

 

Beep.

 

The zombies instantly dashed after the source of the noise.

 

Beep.

 

The bomb bounced to the ground and was instantly surrounded on all sides my the howling undead.

 

BOOM!

 

The street went as silent as death.

 

"Whew." Ellis leaned against Nick's back, who in turn leaned on him. "Damn, Coach, you didn' think you coulda thrown that just a little earlier?"

"Shut up, kid." Coach snapped. "Be thankful I had one at all."

"Don't argue, kids." Rochellee said, trying to catch her breath. "We have to get going, we won't get out of here by standing here!"  
  
They all nodded and were about to start on their way when in the silence they heard a single gunshot.

They all froze and looked at eachother.

"Now...I know all uh ya'll heard that...right?" Ellis said.

"Other survivors!!" Rochellee said. "Get your rears in gear, let's see if we can catch up with them!"  
  
==============  
  
Zoey had crumpled to the ground, one hand on her sawn-off shotgun, the other over her mouth as she quietly sobbed.  
But as soon as she heard footsteps coming down the street, and from the sound of it a lot of them running very fast, she was on her feet wiping the tears from her bleary eyes.  
She held her gun up and kept her finger steady on the trigger, waiting for the first undead bitch to round the corner that she could take out her anger and revenge on.

At the first sign of movement, her gun lurched and she blasted at the first thing she saw, much to the surprise of one redneck who had just lost a chunk out of the bill of his trucker hat.

 

“WOAH!”  He exclaimed, taking a step back.  “Easy there partner!  We’re not zombies!”  He waved his hands from behind the building he and the rest of his group were still tucked behind as if to surrender.

 

There was a clattering sound as Zoey immediately dropped her weapon, afraid she had hurt someone, afraid that a bullet had taken another life today.  When no more shots were fired, Ellis took his opportunity to peak around the corner.  Taking this as a signal that the coast was clear, the other three survivors peeked their ways into view.

 

“You the one that fired that shot?” came the raspy voice of the largest member of the survivor troop.  He smirked slightly and gave a laugh of strange humor.  “You’ve got pretty good aim, nearly took Ellis’s head off.”

 

The hillbilly scowled in protest at the other man.  “She did not! Didn’t you see me dodge that?”  Ellis leaned his shotgun over his shoulder and tilted his head slightly in a cocky manner.  “Like did I ever tell all uh ya’ll ‘bout this one time, me and Keith decided we was gonna have us a duel in Keith’s back yard?  Anyway, we did the whole western ten paces and when Keith turned to fire I –“

 

"No." Zoey cut in, stopping his story. "I didn't fire that gun. It was...probably Francis, now that I think of it." Her lower lip trembled for a moment before her expression went steely again. "Guys!" she shouted over her shoulder. "There's a group of four survivors here! What should we do with them?"  
  
There was the crunching of boots on gravel as a black man wearing a disheveled white button-up  and red tie walked around the edge of the building.  
"Who are all you?" he said almost scornfully, looking each of the strangers over individually.

The hick tipped what was left of his hat and nodded slightly at the other man.  “Name’s Ellis.”

 

Beside him, the black woman with her hair in braids tightened her grip on her sidearm.  “Rochelle.”

 

The wiry man in the white pantsuit straightened his back, relaxing in the presence of more humans.  “I’m Nick.”

 

Finally the large black man adjusted his stance so that he was squared off with the scrawnier survivor.  “My name’s Coach.”  The larger man nodded towards the fellow man respectfully.  “Good to know there’s at least two brother’s left.”

"There were four." Zoey said coldly, keeping her gaze over his shoulder. "I'm Zoey. That's Louis. Drinks all around." She then peered around the corner, but did not seem to really look. "Please tell me...tell me it didn't hurt him..."

There came a loud, gruff chuckle. "Are you kidding?" the voice said. "He demanded me give him the gun when I didn't pull the trigger fast enough."  
His boots seemed heavier than Louis' and there was a distinct clinking sounds of loose bullets rattling around in the pockets of darkwash jeans.

A man with a very short haircut and finely trimmed beard considering the circumsances of the world rounded the corner with a large pump-action shotgun over his shoulder. He had tattoos running all up and down both his arms. "I'd never seen anyone blow off their own head so gracefully."  
  
He took his gaze away from Zoey and looked over the small group.  
His eyes stopped on Ellis and widened slightly.  
"No...freaking...way..." he said, bewildered.

 

The hick blinked at the other man and narrowed his eyes.  “Who the hell d’ you think you’re glarin’ a –“  Ellis paused and his jaw twisted into a strange look, half a snarl and half a look of astonishment.  “Big-brother?  The heck are you doin’ still alive?”

 

Rochelle looked back and forth between the two men as they slowly walked towards each other, chests puffed out as if trying lot appear formidable.  “Wait… you two know each other?”  The corner of the redneck’s lip turned upwards in a distasteful sneer, and Francis returned the look as both men sized the other up.

"Excuse me, did you just say brother?" Zoey said. "Since when do you have a brother, you said you were an only child!"

"I was." Francis said. "Until his mother got frisky with my daddy."

"Wait, you really do have a brother?" Louis said.  
  
"Well...not for a really long time." Francis said, looking back at the man before him. "Eight people left alive in the world and my bratty little brother's one of them."

"Seven." Zoey snapped coldly and walked around the corner, seeming to go after someone.

“Yeah,” Ellis shot back with a sneer, “and who’d uh thought mah big ol’ prick of a brother would still be alive –“  The hick received a quick jab in the ribs from the black woman beside him and she gave him a face that shushed him.

 

“So… you… you guys lose someone then?” Rochelle asked slowly, doing her best not to offend anyone.  Francis grunted and nodded back in the direction Zoey had just disappeared off in.

 

“Bill… poor son-of-a-bitch got pounced by a hunter and we couldn’t get to him in time.”

 

The four newcomers looked down or away, shuffling their feet of fidgeting with their weapons, not sure how they were supposed to respond to the grim news.

 

"He was like a daddy figure to her." Francis said. "Seein' as her old man's probably dead."  
"Would you care to help us bury him?" Louis said. "We may as well stick together, and there's no way in hell Zoey will let us move on without giving him a proper burial."

 

Nick nodded somberly and looked up at Louis sighing reluctantly, but not able to turn down the other survivors when asked for help.  “Yeah, we’ll help you bury him…”

 

“Hell, well give him a damn twenty-one gun salute!” Ellis jumped, making Rochelle look away and coach rub his thumb and forefinger over his brow.  Francis gave his would-be step brother a short nod.

 

“Thanks little brother…”  Louis gave the biker a stunned look as if he could not believe that Francis had actually thanked anyone for anything.  The look did not last long as the man turned away, slinging his shotgun over his shoulder.  “Let’s everyone split up and find something to dig with.”

 

"And don't forget to bring a gun, you idiot." Francis sneered at Ellis.

They split up for a while, searching  this way and that, until they all came back with some old shovel.  
They walked around the corner and saw Bill for the first time, Zoey kneeling next to him and holding his hat. A military hat, it looked like. For a military guy. She kissed his cheek and placed his hat on his head. "We're gonna miss you, Bill." she murmured, standing up. "Okay. I think we can do this without me turning into a sobbing mess now."  
  
She tried to steel her gaze, but it was painfully clear how much pain she was in.

 

The only other woman in the group moved silently to Zoey’s side and placed a comforting hand on the younger girl’s shoulder, not saying a word but still trying to ease her inner turmoil.  There was a heavy silence for what felt like ages.  Eventually fed up with the quiet, somber mood, Ellis lifted the pickax from over his shoulder and drove it into the dirt underfoot.  The suddenness of the action made Zoey flinch, but she stayed steady with the hand of the other woman laying comfortingly on her shoulder.

 

In the next minute, everybody was helping to dig the hole.

Zoey whimpered something and hurried back to Bill's side. Apparently she wasn't as tough as she thought. She reached through his jacket and shirt until her hand clasped around the small locket. She unhooked it from behind his neck and put it on herself, looking inside at the miniature portrait of Bill and his wife. "I'll find her for you, Bill." she said, taking his hat once more and putting it on her own head. "And I'll give her these things."  
  
She went into a nearby broken down drug store and grabbed as many packets of cigarettes as she could carry, just about every one in the store. "Bury him with these." she said, dumping them on the ground. "He'll be pissed if he wakes up in the other life and there aren't any cigarettes."

 

Less than discretely, Ellis paused in his digging and leaned over to Louis  who was hacking at the dirt next to him with a crow bar.  “Do all uh ya’ll figure when he wakes up he’ll be a smoker then?”  Across the grave, Francis gave the hick a warning growl accompanied by a disgusted look, the whole expression telling Ellis to shut the fuck up before Zoey herd anything he had said.

 

 

"He won't be waking up." Zoey snapped. "He's immune, and besides he'll be buried too far down."

She started to dig as well, with nothing but her hands, scooping handfuls of dirt out of the hole and tossing them into the pile everyone was making.

The redneck flinched and scratched at the back of his neck nervously, muttering a quiet apology before returning to digging.

 

It wasn’t long before the survivors began to hit concrete and piping, forcing them to stop and make due with a three foot deep grave.  Louis and Francis took the old man’s body and lowered him carefully into the pit, the biker folding Bill’s arms across his chest and smoothing over his white hair until he looked peaceful in death if one didn’t look below his waist.  Ellis removed his trucker cap and held it over his heart while the two men scrambled out of the grave.

 

Jamming his hands into his pockets, Francis hunched his shoulders and stood next to his stepbrother.  “I hate funerals” he muttered under his breath.

 

Zoey neatly piled all the boxes of cigarettes around him, taking one out of the box and putting it in his hand. She placed a gentle kiss to his forehead and they all started to fill the hole back in.  
  
  
When at last the grave was complete, she said a few brief words before she could way no more because of her tears. "Oh, don't fuss." she sniffled when Rochelle offered her a small package of tissues. "I'll be fine by tomorrow."

She emptied the ammo out of his guns, no use in leaving it behind after all, and stabbed the barrels into the ground over the head of his grave in an x-shape.

"Okay." she said after a long silence. "We've spent enough time in this godforsaken neighborhood. Let's get the hell out of here. We've got to keep moving. Come on, new guys."

Zoey seemed to storm ahead of the rest of the group, a new air about her, as if by wearing Bill’s military hat that she was now the general of this war on zombies.  The rest of the survivors had to pick up their paces to keep up with her.  In the back of the line, Coach muttered under his breath about all this exercise not being good for a big man’s heart; Nick promptly smirked at him and told him to look on the bright side.  “Look, maybe, we get out of New Orleans, and the rescue team is waiting for us, with a big old bucket of fried chicken.”

That thought seemed to pick Coach up and he started forward a bit faster.  
Francis somehow ended up next to Ellis. "So, little brother." he sneered. "How'd you manage to survive this long with no muscle? You must have been found by these guys on the brink of death, huh?"

 

“Heh, you kiddn’?” Ellis chuckled slightly, giving the other man a cocky smirk.  “I ain’t the scrawny little kid you used to kick around the playground anymore!”  Slinging his shot gun over one shoulder, the hick used his free hand to peel up the bottom of his ragged shirt.  “I gawt abs now!”  Though thin from malnutrition and dirty from lack of a shower, the hillbilly did have clearly defined abdominals.  “Go ahead!  See if you can punch ‘em!”

 

Before he had the chance, Coach came up behind Ellis and gave him a hard swat to the back of the head, causing Francis to snort a little. "Give it a rest, kid." the large man snapped. "Now's not the time to be playin'."

He regarded the back of Zoey's head, which had anguish written all over it.  
  
They all seemed to be in a somber mood, and none of them did much talking, save for the occasional ramble from Ellis that was silenced by someone eventually.  
Zoey certainly did the most shooting, unloading clip after clip into the stray zombies that charged up to her without even flinching or bothering to wipe the blood from her face afterwards.  
  
Eventually when the sky grew dark they decided to make camp in an old grocery store, in the back where some poor bastard had been dragged away and probably eaten from the little camp he had set up. It had food and water, ammunition and a few guns that Louis decided to trade his machete in for, and a sleeping bag. Everyone elected Zoey to sleep in it without a second thought.  
  
When she was fast asleep, Francis huddled against the wall next to a small fire he had started in an old paint can.

There was a slight rustling as the man’s stepbrother stood and tiptoed across the room and sat next to the fire, cattycorner to Francis.  Ellis’s left cheek was slightly bulging, packed full of junk food which it took him a while to swallow before he could speak to the other man.  Holding out a small plastic package, he jiggled the sweets in Francis’s direction whispering “Twinkie?” to make sure that the biker knew food was being offered to him.  “You know, they say these things never go bad!”

 

"Well yeah." Francis hissed. "Shit can't go bad. No thanks, I'll stick to my beef." He munched away on his package of beef jerky. "Protein, even if it is laden with salt, is better than a sugar high. Not that you would know that, hick."He prodded a foot in his direction to let him know he meant that to be taken lightly. "I gotta say, I never thought I'd see you again."

 

Ellis shrugged unwrapping the junk food and peeling the plastic down to take a bite.  He gave his stepbrother a sideways smile, some of the Twinkie filling sticking in the corner of his mouth.  The redneck shook the sugary snack at Francis and gave him a hum as if to mock him with how much better his junk food tasted that the other man’s beef jerky.

 

Francis scoffed and shook his head. "The only reason you're not fat is cause of the crazy zombie apocalypse.” He took another bite of his jerky. "So tell me a bit about the guys you're traveling with. Might as well talk about _something_ if neither of us is gonna get any sleep."

 

Ellis’s smile disappeared and he swallowed his mouthful of sponge-cake.  “Uh… well they ain’t much to say about ‘em.  I wouldn’t trust Nick around my wallet… nawt that money matters much anymore.  Rochelle is kinduh nice ah guess, she don’t listen much to me though.  All Coach ever thinks about is what we gonna eat next…”

 

Francis frowned. "You mean they're not your friends? Shit, how do you live with eachother? I mean, Louis is a bit of a pussy, and there's not much to be said about Zoey, but we kinda love each other sort of, in a weird way. It must be hell traveling with people you don't love, let alone trust. I guess I could say something more about my guys...Zoey I'm pretty sure is a man in a lady's body. I mean, she kicks ass better than I can sometimes. She's pretty damn tough, toughest woman I've ever met. Louis...I don't know about him, we don't talk much. But we have a mutual respect for each other." Ellis seemed to be staring at Francis dumbfoundedly, so he leaned in and said, "Mutual means to share something in common."

 

Ellis sighed, rubbing his palm over his face and removing his trucker cap and combing his fingers through his hair.  “Shit man…”  The hick sighed and leaned back until he was flat on his back, taking another bite of his Twinkie and chewing thoughtfully, not even bothering to swallow before he spoke again.  “I guess this whole zombie apocalypse thing just kind of caught me at a bad time…”

 

"Well I'm sure all the zombies are real sorry they stepped in at a bad time." Francis said, stuffing the last couple pieces of jerky in his mouth. "I'm sure if they could do it all over, they would wait until you gave them the say-so to start eating people."

 

Putting down the remains of his Twinkie, Ellis crossed his arms behind his head and turned his head away.  “Whatever asshole” he grumbled, averting his stepbrother’s gaze.

 

"Oh don't be like that." Francis toed Ellis' leg with his boot. "You know I'm just messin' with you. First time I've seen you in a couple years, I got a lot of teasing to get out. Are you gonna try to fight back like you used to? Or have you given up your balls for brains?"

Ellis snorted, still not looking at the other man.  “Who needs brains when there ain’t nobody smart to talk to anymore anyway?”  A sigh heaved out of the redneck’s chest.  “I druther have a shotgun over a brain any day.”

 

Francis snorted. "Yeah, zombies don't eat shotguns." he said, giving a crooked smirk in Ellis' direction.

“Exactly” the redneck retorted coldly.  There was a long, frigid pause before again Ellis was the one to speak.  “I’m gonna hit the sack.”  With that, he rolled over so that his back was facing the fire and he was turned away from Francis.  His left arm fumbled around searching of something for him to rest his head on before finally a slightly crushed box became his pillow.  “Night.”


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning came accompanied with stiff joints and aching muscles; that night, Ellis had not fared well, he had tossed and turned in his sleep, and being afraid he would roll into the glowing coals in the fire pit, had gotten up and moved to a different location.  He took in a deep breath, inhaling the stench of rot that had overthrown all other smells within days of the first widespread outbreak of the infection.  Ellis sighed, heaving the wretched scent from his senses, though no there was no clean air to replace it.

 

The hick wiped a drowsy hand down his face in an attempt to wake himself , only to find that something was very wrong.  He remembered having fallen asleep with a box under his head, facing the center of the room with all of his teammates in view save for Francis.  Now he was staring into a dripping concrete wall with his skull resting on a warm pillow with a heartbeat.

At some point during the night his natural instincts had taken over on the subconscious search for warmth. He had rolled over towards Francis, his head lying on his chest, his arms folded next to his head. Francis seemed to have not woken up, still sleeping peacefully.  
His heartbeat was strong, just like the rest of him, powerful, almost passionately beating away at the cage of his chest.

Ellis froze, his lungs refusing to breath for a moment for fear that any movement would awaken the man beneath him and a walloping would soon follow accompanied by a stream of scornful curses.  Moving carefully, imagining himself to be Ethan Hunt on yet another impossible mission, this time escaping the pressure sensitive chest of his stepbrother without setting off the alarm.

 

Francis snorted gently in his sleep, causing the hick to freeze up, hovering inches off the older man's chest. He looked his sleeping brother in the face, and exhaled silently when he saw him still asleep, sitting up abruptly and slamming his back against the wall.  
The impact of his back against said wall sent Francis spluttering awake, his hand flying to his gun as he was brutally startled out of a bad dream.

" _Shit, Ellis._ " he hissed, looking over it him. " _Give me a damn fuckin' heart attack why don't you!_ "

The hick’s eyes widened for a moment, but he continued to press his back to the wall.  His brain wasn’t top notch or anything, but adrenaline sure helped get the blood flowing in his cortex.  “Sorry… I… uh… Though I heard a boomer out there…”  There was a long silent pause while Francis sat rigid, gun in hand, listening for the tell-tail gurgling of the obese infected.  There wasn’t a single sound apart from the sound of Ellis’s heart slamming against his ribs.

 

Suddenly the air erupted with what sounded like a moan.  Francis gave his stepbrother a startled expression before looking downward.  Ellis was clutching his stomach, his face flushed.  Again the sound of gurgling came, but it wasn’t the sound of a boomer; Ellis’s stomach was demanding breakfast.

 

Francis snorted again. "Yeah, there's a boomer alright." he said. "You ate it. Come on, if we hitch up the hotdog machine there should still be some hot dogs in the freezer in the back of this store we can throw on the grill for everyone as a surprise."  
  
The two of them did just that, pulling out an entire box and soon were sizzling a good 25 hotdogs on the rollers. The rest of the survivors woke up not to the smell of rotting flesh, but rather of cooking pork. Coach announced his approval quite loudly as everyone stiffly walked into the main room.  
  
"There aren't any buns I could find." Francis said. "But enough plastic forks to go around, you can just spear them up. There's plenty, we should all get lots of protein before we head out."

Waiting his turn in line, Ellis was more than happy to take his fair share of hot food, helping himself to a fresh bottle of mustard.  Though he didn’t escape breakfast without a fresh yellow stain on the front of his shirt, he was able to give his distended stomach a satisfied pat when his meal was downed.

Francis ate a good deal as well, as did everybody. They all felt much better with their insides warmed, though they had to stop occasionally to shoot down the hoardes that came running towards the smell of cooking meat.  
  
"Are we ready to go then?" Francis said after they had shut down the machine. Each one of them had ended up having probably 20 dogs themselves, so they had no further reason to stay there.  
It was funny, really, how they ate like camels.

The survivors made their way through the desolate streets of what had once been a bustling metropolis.  They followed the red spray paint that pointed them towards their next sanctuary.  The streets seemed terrifyingly dead; the end of the world was simply something that could not be adjusted to.  The scene never changed much, abandoned cars and empty buildings boarded up futilely against the fatal illness.

 

The day was passing like every other day spent after the infection had decimated the human population, that is until group came upon what at first appeared to be a construction site.  The closer they came to the chain link fence however the less it looked like they had first expected.  Instead of construction equipment, there were military vehicles and barbed wire surrounding the area on all sides.

 

As the survivors made their way through the military installation, the crackling sounds of a radio failing to locate the proper frequency began to buzz in their ears.

 

Then suddenly came the crackling voice over a walkie talkie.  
  
~~ _Private!! Do you come in, private!! Get to the docks on the far side of the city if you can hear this, get everyone the hell out!! They're gonna bomb this city sky high in 96 hours!! Get everyone out, do you read me Private? Private!!~~_  
  
"Shit..." Francis said. "Someone gonna answer that?"

Louis was on it almost instantly, fumbling with the buttons as he struggled to reply.  “H-hello?  We are a group of stranded survivors, would you repeat?  They are bombing the city?”

 

“Shit man!” came the grainy reply, “you guys gotta get the hell out of there!  The military’s cutting their losses and bombing the city in four days! You have got to make it to the Port of New Orleans before 9 am on the fifth day if you don’t wanna go down with the city.  A ferry will be waiting there to escort survivors to our military base in the Keys.”

 

“Thanks, we’re on our way” Louis replied.

 

“God speed men” came the radio operator.

 

_Click._

 

_“Shit.”_

"Four days?" Rochelle muttered. "How we gonna get there in four days before the level the city?"

"It's at least a business week's walk." Nick said, flexing his hands around his gun anxiously.

"Well then we better get started right away." Francis said and started to walk on through the decimated camp.  
  
There was a shrill growl and he groaned as undead swat guys started to run at him. 

"I fuckin' _HATE_ bulletproof zombies!" he yelled and whipped the axe off his back.

The infected let out their cacophony of blood curdling screams as they again charged towards the survivors like a damned flood of the living dead.  The survivors circled up like elephants protecting their backs from a pride of lions.  As the remaining humans opened fire, they found themselves stepping backwards until their spines were pressed firmly against one another’s; Nick’s against Louis’s, Zoey’s against Rochelle’s and Ellis’s against Francis’s, leaving Coach to watch his own large back.

"Watch out!!" Fancis cried, grabbing Ellis by the shoulder and jerking him out of the way before a stream of spitter acid burned the soles off his shoes. He patted him on the shoulder before they went back to back again and Ellis shot the thing's head off.

After about fifteen minutes of what felt like ages of fighting, the survivors could finally wipe the blood and sweat from their eyes and continue on their way out of the city.  There was dead silence; not a one of the remaining seven would break the somber mood.  They all had far too much plaguing their minds as they made haste down the empty streets of New Orleans.

 

Four days.  Four days to make it out of the city with their lives.  Four days and that was it.

Francis walked beside Ellis in silence for a while before he stretched his arms over his head. "So, Ellis." he said. "Did you leave anything real good behind? A girl or somethin'?"  
He wasn't one for small talk really, but hell the silence was driving him mad.

"Naw." Coach said. "That boy's in love with 'his buddy Keith.' "

Nick snorted. "Sure talks about him enough."

“Would ya’ll shut the hell up?” Ellis turned and snapped at the other two men, shooting them both a death glare.  “Weren’t any fantasizin’ or romanticizin’ ‘bout it!  We was just partners in crime is all.”  Sorely put off, the hick folded his arms and turned away, marching ahead of the rest of the group so they couldn’t watch him sulk.

Francis frowned and waved his hands at the other guys to shut them up.  
He hurried up by Ellis' side. "Hey...you okay?" he said. "If that struck a nerve...I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up. I'm sure he was just your best friend is all."

The hick hunched his shoulders as if he could pull his head in like a turtle; he sighed, wishing he could turn back time, or at least escape the people around him.  “Yeah… but I said something really stupid to ‘im and the infection hit… next thing I know’n is Keith’s comen’ at me all hollerin’ and droolin’ blood and… I’m not talkin’ ‘bout this anymore.”

Francis pressed his lips together in a grim line and stared foreward. "If it's any consolation..." he said. "I had to kill a good friend of mine too. Probably all of us have. You're not alone in how you feel. Hell, Bill had to kill his own son. But ahh, never mine you didn't want to talk about this."  
  
He looked over and took the risk of putting a comforting hand on Ellis' shoulder for a moment before taking it away again.  
He didn't know what to say. He was never good at comforting. Usually when he tried he just ended up shoving his boot farther and farther into his mouth.

Ellis went totally silent, slinging his shotgun over his shoulder and cramming his hands into his pockets.  The whole thing made him feel sick, even more so when he thought that out there all the snarling, dripping beasties had all been someone’s families, friends, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers… and that’s who they were killing.  Every time he pulled the trigger he was killing someone else’s Keith.  The hick wanted nothing more than to disappear, somewhere far away where there weren’t any more of these undead sons-of-bitches; where there weren’t any more of anybody.

They suddenly all froze when they heard the tell-tale wail of a witch.  
"Shit." Francis hissed. "I hope she isn't in the -"  
He paused when they rounded the corner and saw the little girl sitting directly in the center of a staircase, crying her little head off. The staircase they needed to get up.  
"-way." he finished with a soft huff. "God damn it."  
  
"Someone's gotta startle her." Zoey said. "There's just no way we're getting past her without her noticing, and we can't afford to stop moving. Four days, guys."  
As if they needed reminding.

"Now don't anyone go off an some dumb suicide thing." Rochelle scolded. "Let's all get far back and shoot her, so we got plenty of time to get her down 'fore she reaches us. Anyone got a sniper rifle with them?"

Before anyone could answer the woman’s question, there was the sound of a blood-curdling, throat-ripping scream.  The sound sent ice down the survivor’s spines and their heads all snapped up to see who it was who had startled the witch.  There wasn’t a one of them who wasn’t stunned beyond all belief; what they were looking at was something never survivor had ever witnessed before, nor did they think they would ever again.

 

The witch was screaming and clawing at the stairs, desperately trying to escape the heel that was pressing into her back.  Ellis was practically standing on the howling infected, his face furious and hard as stone as her piercing, frantic screams echoed off of the buildings.  In one smooth move, the hick whipped his shotgun off of his back, clicking a shell into place and pressing the barrel firmly against the back of the witch’s head.

 

BOOM.

 

Silence.

 

Francis' throat went dry as he struggled to swallow. "Ellis...what the _fuck_ was that?!" he snapped.  
His heart slammed against the cage of his ribs, struggling to get into a steady beating pattern again. That was...that was just terrifying.

Holding the smoking gun over his shoulder, Ellis turned slowly to look at the other gaping survivors, brains and dark, infected blood splattered across his face.  “Kill all sons-of-bitches… that’s my official instructions.”  The redneck’s face was cold and frightening, having no sympathy for the creature that had been screeching and struggling beneath his foot only moments ago.

Francis nodded slowly. He agreed with his "instructions," less agreed with his mode of acting them out.

"You know, she was a girl at some point." he said grimly before slinging his own gun over his shoulder and pushing past Ellis on the stairs.  
Apparently no one else shared his feelings, cause he heard everyone else behind him saying things like "nice shot!" and "dude, that rocked!" and "that was the damn coolest thing I've seen in a while."

Ignoring them, the hick followed his stepbrother up the stairs, shoving past Francis with his shoulder as he slung his warm weapon across his back once again.  “Ain’t a little girl anymore… that’s a fucked up monster.”

Francis was tempted to punch Ellis in the back of the head.  
Sure, he himself had killed his fair share of witches.  
But he'd given every one of them a fighting chance, mostly beneath her feet trying to avoid her claws as he desperately shot at her with his pistol.  
But that was just...that was cold.  
  
"Still a little girl." he argued. "A crazy, psychotic, bloody evil little girl, but a girl nonetheless. They don't lack an age or gender when they get infected, Ellis. And you should treat her with at least a little respect, she probably took ballet or something!! She could have had a baby brother, or a daddy in the hospital. Give her a little more credit than the weepy girl on the stairs."  
He glared at him pretty coldly before shaking his head and abandoning the argument, feeling very cold and bitter inside.

Ellis turned to his stepbrother, shadows covering his face, more or less from the chewed up brim of his trucker cap; the look was no less bone-chilling.  “Save your heart for those of us who are still alive, Francis.  Them zombies out there, they ain’t people no more; they’re monsters.  There’s no changing them back, so it’s either them or us.”  He turned his face upward, meeting Francis with a frigid glare, devoid of the tiniest scrap of sympathy.  “I suggest you pick a side.”

Francis opened his mouth to shoot back a heated answer about human morals when a familiar retching sound filled their ears and a familiar slimy mottled purple tongue wrapped around Francis' body and jerked him out the second-story window before he even had time to cry out.  
  
The smoker had been in the next building over, up on the seventh story story of the tall sky scraper, leaving Francis dangling and kicking as it dragged him higher and higher.  
"Fuck!! Don't shoot it!!" he yelled at the group. He would fall if that happened and...well, he was unlikely to survive the fall. "Just let it drag me up, I'll shoot the damn thing myself!!"

The hick hissed furiously as he sucked in a breath; damned if he was going to let some son-of-a-bitch zombie make off with his big brother.  Gritting his teeth tightly together, Ellis took a few paces backwards before charging after his comrade, leaping out the window after him.  Of course Francis was far too high for him to reach, but the redneck crashed through the window on the building on the roof of which the smoker was perched.  Rolling through the shattered glass of his fall, Ellis tried his best to avoid injury, but didn’t mark it as his first priority.

 

Looking behind him, the hick could just see Francis’s feet kicking as he was dragged past the divider between the second and third stories.  Scrambling through the remains of what had been an office, Ellis dashed around the corner until he charged his way through to the stairwell, immediately dashing up the steps two and three at a time gaining three stories more in what felt like no time flat.

Francis squirmed and struggled, wrapping his wrists several times around the slimy thing holding him from his death in case his struggling should cause the smoker to drop him.

The smoker seemed very annoyed with all Francis' struggling and started to pull him up faster and faster.  
Francis let out a yell and gave the tongue a sharp tug out of anger, hoping to stun or startle the creature.  
  
But no.

The fucking thing lost it's balance and tumbled out the window.

Seven fucking stories off the ground.  
  
Everyone else dashed out the building in hopes to catch Francis should he fall.  
He grabbed onto a window sill just two stories down, unfortunately dropping his gun in the process and watched helplessly as it clattered to the ground fifty feet below.  
He gripped the windowsill with his other hand, groaning as he felt the smoker begin to pull itself up, still wrapped around his waist, like some fucked-up tape measure.  
"Get the fuck off me!" he hollered, kicking the thing in the face, or lack thereof, repeatedly.  
  
It finally seemed to lose it's grip, coughing and hacking as it released a cloud of the thick, foul smelling smoke and fell to the ground where the rest of the survivors shot at it until it was good and dead, forcing themselves to stay in the cloud of foul smoke should Francis lose his grip.  
He wheezed in the burning smog, it burned his eyes, it burned his lungs, and it wasn't particularly tender on his skin either.  
He closed his eyes tight and fought to keep himself up, dangling weakly from the windowsill as he forced the toes of his boots into the tiny ledge the brick wall provided between layers.

The biker could feel his sweaty hands beginning to slip from where he was gripping at the ledge, knowing he would never be able to hold on at this rate.  If he were to fall now, he would not only break several bones and probably die, but with his comrades below, he would be likely to land on one of them and crush someone else as well.  He swallowed a lump of terror that had risen in his throat, struggling for a new grip on the ledge, his feet scrambling desperately against the brick as he fought to pull himself up.

 

“Need a lift?”  Francis looked up with astonishment in his eyes to see Ellis crouching at the edge of the window.  Before his brother could say a word, the hick had a strong hold of the other man’s wrists, keeping his hands from slipping further and with a grunt, pulling him back up into the building.

 

"Shit." Francis breathed once his feet were on solid ground again. "I owe you one, man. I may still be pissed at you, but I owe you one."  
He crouched down, putting his hands on his knees and trying to steady his frantic heart and heavy breathing. His head was spinning, his eyes and lungs still burned like hell, and he was pretty sure he pissed his pants. But he was alive.

Ellis grunted and turned his face away, slinging his gun over his shoulder again and making his way back towards the stairwell.  “Yeah, well don’t worry about payin’ me back anytime soon.  Unlike you Ah ain’t dumb enough to get mahself choked by some brainless monster.”

Francis paused in his gasping for a moment to scowl at the back of Ellis' head. "You think that happened because I was _dumb_?" he snapped. "The fucker dragged me out a window, and you were bein' a dick at the time! What gives you the right!?"

 

“You say that,” Ellis retorted with his hand on the door to the stairwell, “but it wasn’t me, it was you.  Awn top of that, if it wasn’t for me, you’d be down there with ‘em”  With that, the hick pushed his way through the door, hastening himself down the stairs before his brother could catch his breath and follow.

 

Francis leaned out the window and looked down at the group of survivors herding out of the cloud of smoke. "Whoever sees him first, hit him for me, okay?" he called down to them.  
He was about thirty seconds away from smacking the sense out of the hick's head, but he needed the extra manpower to watch his back.  
  
Even if at this point he could have been more of a hindrance than a help.

The remainder of the group waved up at the biker in acknowledgement.  When finally Ellis emerged from the ground floor, Nick promptly punched him in the shoulder while Coach clapped him on the back.  With the sounds of their voices, though their words weren’t clear, the action was congratulatory, not scornful.  Ellis shrugged them off and continued to make his way up the street.

 

Francis showed up moments later and scowled at everyone. "That wasn't hitting." he snapped at Nick. "Do you want an example? I'm pretty good at it, I could teach you just what it looks like!"  
"Boys, shut up." Zoey snapped. "We have enough problems without you beating eachother up!"

 

Ellis ignored the other six completely, continuing up the street whether or not they decided to follow after him.  “Remember ya’ll, we only gawt four days to get the hell outa here, so keep movin’.”

Francis once again scowled at the back of his head before following quickly after him, electing to walk next to Rochelle. She seemed more civil than anyone else at this point.  
"Does anyone else notice he's being a little weird? Tell me I'm not the only one who sees it." he muttered to the group out of Ellis' ear shot.

 

Rochelle sighed, looking up at Ellis and scratching the back of her head in slight bewilderment.  “Yeah, I don’t know what’s gotten in to him lately.”  She glanced behind her, wondering if it was the arrival of the new survivors that had put Ellis out of his comfort zone and gotten him all on edge.  “He’s never been like this before, he’s always so… optimistic.  It’s actually a little bit scary.”

 

"Well at least I'm not the only one who sees it." he said. "I'll knock his brains back in the right place eventually. Just let him go on his little power trip for a few hours, maybe a day, and if he doesn't go back to normal I'll have a talk with him."  
He pounded his fist into his palm to emphasize "talk."

 

The rest of the day neither improved Ellis’s mood nor his behavior, resulting in a rather long string of increasingly reckless and brutal zombie killings.  Francis would look over his shoulder at the sound of a screeching hunter, only to see his younger brother pinning the creature under the barrel of his gun and strangling it into the afterlife.

 

Francis tried to give it a little more patience, a few more hours.  
But nothing seemed to get any better.  
  
The way he would soundlessly blast away the zombie's faces, not even wipe the blood from his eyes when he was done...  
  
In any case, the survivors made good time that day, covering almost twenty miles despite the hazards along the way.  
Ellis made due to clean them up anyway.

That night as they huddled into the back of an old gun store, with brand new guns and all the ammo they could need for the next day, Francis put his hand on Ellis' shoulder.  
"We need to talk. Now." he snapped.

 

“Why?” Ellis said, slowly turning his head to sneer at the other man, “You wanna talk ‘bout your feelin’s like a woman again?”  The hick tipped his hat as if he were a cowboy showing respect to the lady-folk of the Wild West.

 

Without answering him, Francis grabbed his shoulder and rather brutally dragged him outside, throwing him out the door. He kept his gun strapped to his back just in case.  
"Now then." he started.

But instead of launching into a rant, he grabbed hold of Ellis' shoulder again and made very sharp, very strong connection between his knuckles and the younger man's jaw, letting him crumple to the dust.  
He grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him back to his feet.

 

"Okay. Now we can talk." he said, shaking out his hand. "Just had to get that out. Now would you kindly tell me what the _fuck is the matter with you_?!"

 

“What the fuck is the matter with _me_?” Ellis hollered, cupping his cheek in his hand and glaring fiercely at the biker, “Ah ain’t the one tryn’a punch mah teammates teeth in!  What the fuck is the matter with _you_?!”

"No, Ellis. This isn't about me, or about how much you deserved that. This is about you and your sudden issues!! Now I don't know you very well, but even your own little group of people are freaked!  You're on edge and you're all wound up; except for when you're killing zombies, cause then you're just scary!"  
"Aw shut the hell up, you ain’t got a clue what yer talkin' ‘bout." Ellis snapped. "I know how tuh do mah job."

  
"No, Ellis. No, you don't." Francis snapped, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him lightly. "Dude, I don't scare easy, but you're scaring the crap out of me right now! You're scaring everyone!! You know, I'm glad there are zombies around, cause if there wasn't the way you're acting right now you just would have found something else to kill."

“An whut makes ya think that awd ave any reason to be kill’n jack shit if they wasn’t any zombies?”  Ellis raised his hands and quickly gave the other man a shove to his chest, pushing him hard enough to send him backwards a few paces.  “Hell, if they wasn’t any zombies, Ahd probly be out fill’n mah neighbors trunk full uh possums with Keith raght ‘bout now!”

"Man, you're just going off the edge with everything!! You don't even put into respect that these were all people at one point!! The other guys said you used to at least enjoy it, but right now you're just fucking psychotic!! I didn't think you needed to know this, but Coach and Nick...I heard them saying they think you're getting infected!! You neet to take it down a notch, man!!"

  
"Shut the hell up, Francis." Ellis snarled. "Ah told ye I know how tuh do mah job!!"

  
"Dude, it's killing you! It's killing you, okay?!" He grabbed Ellis' shoulders again, shaking him a bit harder. "I already lost everyone, I can't lose you too!! Not when I've found you again!! Please, man, _please_!!"

“Git your hands off uh me!” Ellis snarled, knocking Francis’s arms away and shoving him backwards again.  “Wut are you, some kind uh fuckin’ queer?”  The hick took a step back away from his stepbrother, giving him a look of over-exaggerated disgust.  “If’n ya’ll don’t like the way Ah work, then maybe Ah ought tuh be workn’ alone then!”

"You wouldn't last one day." Francis snarled. "One pounce from a hunter and you'd be gone. Why the hell are you so erratic all of a sudden?! Why are you treating this like some foolhardy suicide mission?! Are you that desperate to die, is that it?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!"  
  
By now, the others were awake as well, and listening through the walls at the argument.  
Something was very wrong, but it was best to let them get out their yelling and tension.  
And if the case were that they had to leave them behind for the safety of the group...  
Well then that would be it.

 

That was it.  There was some part of Ellis that simply snapped, and before Francis could so much as protest, the hick had a fist in the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall, knocking the air out of his chest.  “Ya’ll pussy bastards think this is some kinduh game, don’cha?  That man we buried was meant to die on account uh he was so’ld an’ decrepit?” The hick balled his brother’s shirt in his fists and gave him another quick slam against the wall, winding him once again.  “Well Ah ain’t uhbout tuh let any more uh ya’ll die, an’ if that means not showin’ uh lick uh mercy to these mealy-mouthed bastards, then that’s jist the price Ah gotta pay!”

 

Francis smacked his hands away and even went so far as to boot him in the stomach, just hard enough to kick him a few feet back. "You didn't even fuckin' know the guy!" he hollered. "You're the one treating this the wrong way, you're wound so tight you might snap and shoot the next person who looks at you wrong!! Hell, I'm glad you don't have a gun right now or I'd be scared you'd shoot _me_!!"

“Ah ain’t _got_ to!” Ellis shouted, instantly charging at the other man, arms out stretched to snatch at Francis’s shoulders and throw him to the ground.

 

Francis' heart skipped a beat when he saw Ellis come running at him, with the same enraged look on his face he saw on every infected son-of-a-bitch that charged his way.

His own brother, racing for him with that look on his face...  
His hand twitched for his gun out of reflex but he just couldn't do it.  


He felt his body hit the ground as a bitter coldness swept through his body.

  
He barely felt Ellis' fists connect with his face, barely heard his voice shrieking in anger.

  
All he could think as his head was tossed from side to side and occasionally slammed back against the ground was,

  
 _Oh God...if you have any mercy...not my little brother too..._  
 __  
"Ellis get the hell off him!!" came a familiar voice and Ellis was wrenched from where he had been sitting on Francis' chest to a stand.  
Coach held one of his arms, Nick had the other, as Ellis continued to scream at Francis.  
  
The biker got unsteadily to his feet and wiped blood from his chin, spitting on the ground before yanking a pistol out of his back pocket and pointing it directly at the furious hick's forehead.

  
"Either you got a serious attitude problem." he said. "Or you're turning into one of them. I wanted to be patient with you, Ellis, but you're making it very hard to give me a choice here. You just attacked me, Ellis, do you even realize that? You were screaming like one of them, that's for darn sure. What were you hoping to accomplish, Ellis? Did you think we would just let it happen? You better give me one damn good reason, Ellis, one damn good fucking reason not to blow your brains out the back of your skull."  


The redneck struggled slightly against the men restraining him, but when he heard the sound of Francis’s pistol cocking beneath his thumb, Ellis fell still.  The hick’s heaving chest was the only motion his body made, his eyes were wide and his pupils constricted to dots, trained on the barrel of Francis’s gun.  There was a moment of pure, unbroken silence while the redneck’s breathing slowly shuddered back to a normal pace.  When it had finally decreased and Ellis could stop gasping for breath in his furiously tight throat, his head dropped forward, almost as if admitting defeat and accepting the bullet he was sure was going to be put through his brain.

 

Francis' hand shook gently as he kept the gun trained directly at Ellis' forehed.  
"God damn it!" he snapped, turning away. "I can't blow my own brother's head off!" He threw the gun to the ground and ran his hands over his short hair, trying to catch his own breath. He turned and with a short breath slammed a punch against Ellis' jaw. "Tie him up for the night." he said. "If he hasn't had enough time to think through the night about how he's acting....well...we'll figure that out in the morning."

 

There was no struggle; all the fight seemed to have drained from Ellis’s body as he let his comrades bind him and drag him back into the weapons shop.  The hick really couldn’t believe it himself.  Could he really be turning into one of those freaks of nature?  Was he really about to tear into his big brother like that?

 

Francis sat boldly next to Ellis. Certainly no one else wanted to, and they sat in a different room entirely.  
"Well?" the older man said after what seemed like an eternity. "Do you have _anything_ to say for yourself?"

 

Ellis didn’t look up, only sat hunched over with his arms bound behind his back and his legs knotted together.  The flickering light of the overhead fluorescent bulb kept his face covered in shadows, despite its best efforts to illuminate the hick.  There was a long pause before Ellis sighed, his shoulders slumping in utter defeat.  “Ah… ah din’t mean tuh… Ah… I don’t know whut it was come over me… Ah was angry...”  The redneck looked up at his older stepbrother, his face soft in his moment of weakness.  “They… they took Keith away… Ah ain’t gawt nobody else but you no more, an’ up ‘til yesterday, I hadn’t even that much…”  Again the younger man slumped, looking back at his knees.  In the low light, Francis could see that his stepbrother’s face had become very grave.  “If… if that  ever happens again…” Ellis mumbled after a long silence.  “Don’ hesitate an’ put that bullet in mah head, gawt that?”

 

"Don't ask me to do that." Francis muttered, looking away. "I may hate you sometimes...but never enough to kill you. The others, though....they're really worried you've gotten infected somehow. The incubation period is forty-eight hours. If you don't get better....God damn it, let's just say you'd better not get sick. Cause after all these years, I don't know if I could handle..." he cut himself off.

  
"Handle...whut?" Ellis prodded on.

  
"Handle losing you again." Francis almost whispered. He did not make eye contact with the younger man. "You know....this infection took away someone very important to me, too. A lover. So if you were half as close to this Keith guy as I was with my lover...I can relate to how you feel."

 

Ellis looked away from his stepbrother, hiding his face completely from the other man.  There was something about the way Francis was speaking that made the hick unable to look at him; something that made him afraid.  Determined not to let the fear to show through, Ellis had to continue the conversation.  “What was she like?... Ah bet she was purdy… yuh always did have the purdiest girls hangin’ off your arm.”

 

Francis took in a sharp inhale. "Uhh...yeah." he muttered. "She was great. She was in the same biker gang I was in...her name was...ahh...Jackie. She could throw knives better than anyone I'd ever met in my life, and was always wearing leather. She was tall, too. Tall and strong, she didn't take shit from anybody." he seemed to remember fondly. "She could out drink any idiot in any bar, and could sing, too. Even when she was wasted. Wasn't very good at those times, but it didn't keep her from belting it out. She had fiery red hair, and near silver eyes, real tan, god she was so..." He cut himself off and took a deep breath, running his hands over his short hair. "Then she came charging at me spewing blood. Just like every other damned zombie in the whole fucking world."

 

Ellis looked up at his older brother, blinking at him for a few moments before nodding solemnly.  “Sounds like you lost uh lot tuh the infection hit too, huh.”  Ellis shuffled slightly, trying to become comfortable with the ropes holding him.  He wanted to cut the bonds and free himself, but he knew he would have to behave if he wanted to stay alive.

 

"Yeah. A lot." Francis cleared his throat. "Oh, but fuck it. It was just one person. I mean hell, it wasn't that important. What should I care? I put him down just like everyone else, and it's not like he made a huge effort to stay away from the infected anyway, it's his own god damn fault!! I don't care. It wouldn't have lasted anyway, the zombie apocalypse just broke us up before I could dump him, or he me..."  
  
His words were all jumbled, even more so than his emotions, and everything tumbled out of his mouth in a blur, he really didn't have a clue what he was saying.

 

“Hey hey woah woah hey there.”  Ellis rolled slightly to lock eyes with his stepbrother, one eyebrow raised.  “Whut’s all this ‘he’ stuff bro?  Wasn’t we talkin’ ‘bout your lady-friend?”

Francis' stomach dropped and he inhaled sharply through his nose. "I...Did I say he?" he said. "I'm not thinking clearly, nan, I'm exhausted. Fucking hell, don't patronize me. I'm getting some shut-eye, I suggest you do the same."

  
And just like that he was done talking, turning over on the floor and pillowing his head on the crook of his arm awkwardly.  
  
 _Shit. Shit. Shit._

“Naw, naw, naw” Ellis started, rolling to face the other man and bent his knees to nudge Francis in the small of his back.  “You clearly said _‘he’_ over and over.”  The hick continued to prod at his stepbrother, trying to get a rise out of him in any way he could.  “Who is _‘he’_ big brother?  Who is it you was talking ‘bout?”

 

"I said, go to sleep Ellis." Francis growled, not turning back to look at him. "I messed. Up. I'm tired. Shut up before I have to knock you out to get sleep."  


“Naw man!” the hick insisted in his classic southern drawl, continuing to poke the other man’s back with his knees, anything to break Francis’s shell down.  “Whut was it you was sayin’?  You said you and him was together!  Whut are you Francis? Some kind of man-lovin’ queer?”

 

“And what if I am, Ellis? Huh? What then? What are you going to do, you gonna hate me all of a sudden just cause I shared something special with a man? Are you that shallow?” Francis hissed over his shoulder. “I said. Go to sleep.”

 

Ellis was silent for a second before scooting his bout body slightly away from his stepbrother.  “Okay” he said defensively, “I kin respet that.”  By the sound of his voice, it was clear that he would have been putting his hands up in his own defense and waving them for mitigation had his wrists not been bound.  There was a long empty hole in the conversation before again it was the redneck who spoke, making Francis cringe, just wishing the damn hick would drop it already.  “So… why a man then?”

 

"God damn it, Ellis." Francis growled. "Cause I hate women, okay? Women are whiny and naggy and always need attention and get pissed if you come home drunk and you can't possibly go out with friends without them interrogating you. They're just a pain in the ass! At least a man gets what a man needs and wants!!"

 

Ellis rolled onto his back despite his own fists under his back giving him a pain.  The hick stared up at the ceiling for what seemed like ages.  “Well, Francis… if’n you hate women-folk so much, why don’t yuh find yoself uh man of the apocalypse?”  He rolled his head slightly to look at the biker, his face seemed relaxed now, like he was genuinely interested in the conversation but didn’t have the energy now to show his enthusiasm.

 

"Cause I don't really like men, either!" Francis said. "Sure, they're easier, but we also tend to be unfaithful, rude, we don't exactly smell great, and we always are trying to show off. Like you, Ellis, you would know how much men like to show off! He'd be dead too soon. And I'm just not willing to lose something like that again."

 

Ellis was silent for a moment before he rolled his head to the side to face away from the other man.  “Well Ah don’t know ‘bout all whut you said, but I think they’s kinduh nice.”  The hick flushed, immediately regretting having said that.  He sputtered for a moment, trying to get himself rightly understood.  “But uh, ah ain’t no cock-suckin’ queer or nothin’.”

 

"You say that like it's a disease." Francis muttered. "I knew a gay guy once who never had sex with men. It isn't all about the sex you know. But no, probably not. Gay is pretty much a bad word in trailer parks. Now can I get some sleep or do you want to interrogate me more about my style of living?"

 

The redneck sighed and rolled to face his back to his stepbrother.  “Yeah… Ah gawt you…”  Ellis grunted slightly and tried to get comfortable, fighting vainly for sleep.  He wanted so desperately for the conversation to be over.

 

Francis sighed.  
 _Things are never gonna be the same with him again after this._ he thought, pinning his eyes closed, hoping sleep would find him eventually.


	3. Chapter 3

That morning came with a vengeance; dew clung to everything, including the survivors, giving everyone stiff joints and aching muscles.  Of course, no one was in worse shape than Ellis.  Being tied all night, he had been unable to find a position to sleep in that wouldn’t send his muscles into hissy fits.  The hick had ended up asleep on his face looking much like a dead man.

 

Francis stretched out his tired muscles and toed Ellis in the side gently. "Well? Have you thought about your actions like a good little boy or should I tie you to my back like a sack of potatoes?"

 

Ellis groaned loudly in response, his face still mashed into the ground.  “Why can’t the fucking end of the world have fucking beds?!  Mah back is killin’ me if the zombies don’t get here first!”

 

Francis laughed. Looked like Ellis was really back to his old self. "I've got to let the others know you're okay before I untie you. You stay put."

 

He sniggered lightly at that comment. As if Ellis could go anywhere. He headed out to the main room. "Alright ladies, wake up." he shouted, making everyone groan as they rolled onto their backs. "Ellis is alright. No blood spewin' and no head spinnin'. We even had a halfway decent conversation last night."

He conventiently left out the subject of the conversation, and could only hope Ellis wouldn’t come running out screaming "Francis fucks men!"

 

The group was quiet for a while before a grin peeled across Nick’s face and he nudged Coach with his elbow.  “Yeah, man, you and our little hick had a real decent conversation last night.”  The conman let out a hiss of a snigger.  “The kid wasn’t too much of a _prick_ to you was he?”  The larger man laughed deeply.  “Yeah, he can be a real _asshole_ sometimes.”

 

A stone landed in Francis' chest. 

 

"Shut the hell up." he snarled. He couldn't even come up with anything better. What the hell was he supposed to say? 'Or I'll kill you?'  
He shot them a cold glare before hurrying into the back room and untying Ellis, throwing a gun down next to him and storming back into the main room, shoving rather brutally between Coach and Nick, who both started to mock like they were covered in some sort of germ.

Rochelle glared at them for Francis. "Boys, is that really necessary?"

"Immature." Zoey rolled her eyes.

Nick sneered at the girl, “Yeah? Come on, you can't say this isn't hilarious.”

Coach laughed again, showing his less than clean teeth as he did. “Yeah, don’t you know, the only thing worse than the infection is HIV.”

 

Francis frowned deeply, his shoulders dropping. It was a bit demoralizing, and knowing he'd now have to deal with this for possibly the rest of the escape out of the city was even worse. "We have two days." he said, his voice eerily calm. "We better get moving if we don't want to get blown to bits."  
 _Best to just ignore it. That's what Jack always did._

“Aw really?” came the conman’s sickeningly sweet sneer.  “I though you _loved_ getting blown to bits, isn’t that what your boyfriend used to do for you?”

 

“HEY!”  All heads turned to the sound of the voice.  It was Ellis, struggling to stand and failing, managing only to come to his knees; even so, he straightened his aching back to make himself as tall as possible.  “Ya’ll better cut that shit out for Ah pop a cap in your dick so hard you’ll have to be gay to get any!”

 

Francis felt the stone in his chest lift a little as he turned and blinked at the hick in shock.  
Ellis was the _last_ person he was expecting to stick up for him. He gave his younger brother a look telling him to shut up. He didn't want their bitter words turning on Ellis, too.

 

Nick blinked and shrugged his shoulders slightly before turning his sneer to Ellis.  “What, now you gotta stick up for your new boyfriend? Hey look!”  Nick grabbed the back of the hick’s head, rocking him back and forth slightly, “Ellis wants to blow you to bits Francis!”  Snarling, the redneck instantly wheeled on his comrade, sinking his teeth into Nick’s wrist and causing blood to well up around his teeth.  The con-artist yelped and released Ellis’s head instantly, tearing his arm from the other man’s grip.

 

“I knew he was infected!  Son of a bitch bit me! He’s sicker than ever!”

 

Francis wheeled around and pointed his gun at Nick. "He wouldn't have bit you if you hadn't held him like that!!" he snapped. "Now I suggest you shut the hell up and calm down before it's _you_ that we tie up and leave behind!!"

He turned on Coach as well, pointing his handgun at the larger man with his hand. "That goes for you too, fatass." he snarled. "You so much as touch one hair on my little brother's head and I'll fill you full of lead so fast you won't have time to think."  


"BOYS!!" Rochelle suddenly yelled. "STOP FIGHTING!!"

"Yeah, guys." Zoey snapped. "We have two days to make it out of here alive. Keep your fucking gay jokes to yourself until we're at least safely out of the city."

 

Ellis spat a gob of the other man’s blood onto the ground before he glanced up at his stepbrother with a thankful look on his face. On the other hand, Nick put his arms up into the air defensively.  “All right, all right! I’ll let you two have your little gay-party, go ahead,” he turned to Zoey and smirked, “I’ll leave Captain Dickhead and his side-fuck alone.”

 

Zoey suddenly slapped Nick hard across the face. "You stupid prick!" she snapped. "I'm gay too, okay!? Now tell me, what the hell is the difference? You'd better mock me just as much as you mock them!! And don't you even dare tell me it's different cause lesbians are hot, you sexist pigs!!"

"Zoey..." Francis muttered. It was an odd mixed feeling of anger, resentment and joy collecting in his gut.

 

That shut Nick up for good, his eyes were wide and his jaw slack as he stared in astonishment for a moment.  There was a very long and very awkward quiet before the conman turned, collected his gun and went out the door, calling over his shoulder.  “I’m out of here, you dickwads better hurry the fuck up if you want to make it out alive.”

 

The rest of the survivors were also in a hushed silence as Rochelle walked over and patter Zoey on the back. "You did good, girl." she smiled.   


They headed out, awkward and stiff, trudging over hills and beating down the few infected that raced for them.

Francis made his way to Zoey's side after a little while. "Thanks." he muttered. "For that, back there. It was...it was real brave. I'd rather get pinned under a tank then come out like that. You're really awesome for doing that." He seemed awkward, like he hadn't properly thanked anyone for anything in a long long time.

 

Zoey looked up at the biker and gave him a kind of half smile.  “You kind of took care of that last night anyway.”  She looked ahead again, “it doesn’t really matter so much to me… it’s the truth, so why not tell it, you know?  Why live your life through lies because you’re afraid some prick like Nick is gonna start saying shit about you?”  They continued walking up the street, everyone was ahead of them except for Ellis who was watching the rear of the group, mostly walking backwards and firing his sidearm at infected who thought they were sneaky enough to get the survivors from behind.  He wasn’t really paying any attention to their conversation, he was far to absorbed in what he was doing; he chuckled to himself, it was like that time he and Keith had gone to the video arcade and played duck-hunter till they were out of cash.

 

“They are only words, you know… It’s an amazing world we live in today, I mean aside from the apocalypse and all.  It used to be, back in Nazi Germany, we’d be poisoned or burned alive, even lined up and shot.  Thank god all that’s changed.”

 

Ellis smirked and whipped the baseball bat off of his back and swirled it in the air a few times before swinging it as hard as he could at the bellowing zombie.  There was a loud crack.  Francis winced, but not hearing the sounds of the charger assumed that Ellis had gotten it.  There was blood splattered across the hick’s face and his bat was smashed in half, but on the other hand the charger was crumpled on the ground, dark blood gushing from its neck where the head had been knocked clean off its shoulders.  Ellis was looking at the sky with a stern look on his face.  The biker whipped his head around just in time to see what must have been the charger’s head soaring through the sky before it landed about two blocks down the street and proceeded to bounce in that direction.

 

A pit dropped in everyone's gut.  
"Shit." Nick hissed. "I knew the fag was infected. He isn't any better than he was yesterday! He's still fucking psycho!"  
Everyone was thinking the same thing. But Nick was the only one blunt enough to blurt it out.

 

Suddenly Ellis’s shoulders hunched up and a wide grin cracked across his lips.  Tossing the busted bad, the hick jumped in the air and punched his fist.  “Yeow!” he shouted, taking off his trucker cap and throwing it to the ground.  “HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME RUUUUUUUUUUUN!” he cupped his hands to his mouth and hollered like the zombies couldn’t hear; they were all too busy shitting themselves anyway.  “AND THE CROUD GOES WILD! ELLIS McCOY HAS JUST WON THE ATLANTA BRAVES THE WORLD SERIES!!!”  Ellis scuffed his shoe on the ground and slapped his thighs before breaking into a series of what the other survivors could only later identify as a series of square-dance steps.

 

When finally the hick had finished his enthusiastic prancing, he grinned down the hill at the rest of his companions.  “HOO DOGIE!  Did ya’ll see that shit?  That was fuckin’ AMAZING!”

 

Rochelle and Francis instantly burst into a fit of laughter, getting tears in their eyes and doubling over.

"Now THAT'S the Ellis I know!!" Francis grinned.

Nick shook his head in mock disgust, but even he was pretty impressed.

"Nice shot, man!" Louis even clapped a little, chuckling as he fired a bullet at the charger's corpse, just to watch it jiggle.

 

Coach grinned and let out his signature laugh.  “Go Braves, Hell yeah!”  Holding his rifle up into the air and waving it slightly, the larger man called up to the hick.  “Hey Ellis!  When this shit is all said and done with, what do you say you an’ me rebuild the team?  You can be the star hitter, and I’ll be the Coach!”

 

Ellis’s grin widened and he waved back.  “Soun’s like a plan tuh me!  But Ah ain’t one for playin’ baseball much, Ah just like drinkin’ beer an’ watchin’ it!”

 

Francis laughed again as Ellis helped him to his feet. "That was super awesome." he said. "Best zombie kill so far!!"

"Hell yeh!!" Ellis cried.

"Enough partying." Nick said coldly. "Let's get moving."  
  
Everyone shot an icy glare at his back as he stormed up the hill and down the street.  
"Prick." Francis huffed and shrugged his shoulders. "Guess we're movin on, guys."

 

Ellis sighed and scratched the back of his head before picking his hat up off the ground.  “Eh, don’ listen to Nick, he’s always been a regular killjoy.”  The hick smirked just a little bit.  “I suppose he’s just upset that all his money’s worthless now that there ain’t no place to spend it at!”  Ellis’s voice was just loud enough for the man in question to hear.

 

The group moved on rather quickly, Nick now taking the lead and shooting down just about everything before anyone else had a chance to see it.  
They turned a corner just in time to hear the tell-tale roar of a tank, and see the grotesquely muscular infected man rip up a tree and throw it at the group of survivors.  
"Shit!!" Francis hit the ground just in time to miss getting wailed by the tree, and turned to make sure everyone, or at the very least Ellis was okay.

 

“Shit!” he heard the younger man curse as he hit the deck.  Francis turned to see the hick shaken but not stirred, aside from his shot gun having been knocked clean out of his hands, Ellis was okay.  The redneck’s heart was pounding in his chest and he fumbled for his handgun, drawing the pistol from the loop in his leather belt.  He pointed the sidearm at the tank, his arms trembling slightly with fear and adrenaline.  He lined the monster’s head up in his sights and squeezed the trigger.

 

_-click-_

 

WHAT?  Ellis’s eyes widened and he looked down at the gun, not able to understand what was wrong with the stupid pistol.  The sound of the click made the tank’s head snap around so the hulking zombie was staring with furiously psychotic eyes at the fumbling hick.

 

_-click-_

_-click-_

_-click-_

 

What the fuck?!  Ellis was panicking by now.  The stupid sidearm never ran out of ammo, and now when he really needed it, the thing was empty!  “Fuck!”

 

It was Francis' turn to panic when he saw the beasts' head turn and look at Ellis. "Look out!!" he called, throwing himself on the hick as the tank lurched forward.  
They were right next to a huge semi truck, and before the tank had time to register that the man he had been running towards was on the ground, Francis had wrapped his arms around Ellis' waist and he rolled beneath the truck, taking his brother with him.  


Terrified, Ellis buried his face in Francis' leather vest. He hadn't been so scared in a while, totally defenseless with a raging angry tank charging around the yard.  
The others all emptied clip after clip into the damn thing, running around like cockroaches to avoid being smashed under the hulking zombie's giant fists.  
Francis held one hand on Ellis' back, the other on his head as he too squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the whole thing would be over soon.

 

After about five minutes of screaming and shooting, the ground shuddered as the monster finally fell on its face, cold and dead; well deader than it had been to begin with.  When they were sure the tank was gone for good, Ellis heaved a sigh of relief, his heart finally calming its furious beating and returning to a normal rhythm.  It was only once the adrenaline that was pounding in his veins began to wear down did the redneck really become aware of his situation.

 

He and his brother were very tightly pinned together, the bottom of the rig giving them very little wiggle room.

He was plastered right against Francis' body, so close that he could feel Francis' breath on his shoulder. His chest was pinned to Francis' chest, his stomach to Francis' stomach, his right leg wedged between Francis' and his face in the crook of Francis' neck.  
They were pinned, totally pinned, with just barely enough room to breathe.

 

Ellis froze as he looked down into the crook of the other man’s neck; that was just it.  He looked down.  The hick was planted firmly on top of Francis, and though he couldn’t turn his head enough to see the look on his stepbrother’s face, he could tell that there was no complaint from him.  “Um… Francis…?” the redneck started, his breath rolled across the other man’s neck and made the biker jump slightly.

 

"I think it's dead now." Francis muttered, turning his head to the right, pretending to itch his jaw on his shoulder. But he just had to get his face away from Ellis' before he realized how he was flushing. "I panicked, he was comin' right for ye."  
His heart pounded in his chest, he was sure Ellis could feel it, tightly pressed together as they were.

 

The hick followed Francis’s lead and turned his head to the left as if he was trying to catch a breath of fresh air.  He didn’t want his brother to hear his breathing so uneven, not like this.  Ellis squeezed his eyes shut and tried to slide off of the older man, but there wasn’t enough room for him to separate from Francis and get off of him.  “Uh… Francis… Ah… Ah think Ahm stuck…”

 

Francis had no choice but to take a firm hold of Ellis' waist and wedge him off, turning just slightly so that they became unpinned at the hick tumbled off to the ground.  
The instant he hit the dirt, he realized how wonderfully warm Francis' body had been in comparison.

 

Ellis did however heave a sigh of relief, because moments after he had been flung off of his brother, Nick poked his head underneath the semi-truck.  “What’s the hold up? You queers making out under there?”  Ellis looked at Nick upside down.  “Naw, we just couldn’t tell if ya’ll had killed the tank yet or nawt, seein’ as how every time you open your mouth it sounds like a little girl screamin’.”

 

Francis sniggered as he to rolled out from under the truck. "We need to get Ellis a weapon, now." he said urgently. "His pistol is out, his shotgun was smashed by the tank and his bat was totaled on the charger."

 

Nick huffed and turned to the redneck who was bent over, dusting off his jeans, not that it made much difference seeing as the denim was already stained beyond recognition.  The conman pulled the axe off of his back and shoved the handle at Ellis’s chest.  “Here, take this till you get a real gun…” he scowled at the hick slightly.  “Try not to break this one.”  The redneck accepted the melee weapon and tipped his hat slightly in thanks.

 

Again taking the lead, Nick shouldered his way past Francis, muttering scornfully under his breath as he passed.  “I feel sorry for you, if Ellis is this destructive with guns, he must be _really_ rough with your dick.”

 

Francis couldn't take it anymore.  
He grabbed Nick's shoulder and wheeled him around, punching him in the jaw so hard, he could almost see Nick's eyes do a 360 in their sockets.

"You need to shut the hell up with all your gay jokes, dumbass." he growled. "You forget that Ellis is my _brother_. If you don't stop bein' such a prick, I'll tie you to an alarm-rigged car and leave you there."

 

Nick stumbled backwards and covered his mouth to keep it from bleeding.  Eventually wiping the spittle and blood from his lips he shot a venomous scowl at the other survivor.  “Fuck you man.”  Nick turned and stormed off up the street.  

 

Ellis sighed and put his hand reassuringly on his stepbrother’s shoulder. “Just let it go man… folks like Nick… they ain’t worth it… just let it go…”

Adjusting the axe in his grip, Ellis nodded to the other man, grunting slightly.  “Hell yeah bro, you gawt mah back, so Ah gawt yours.”  With that being said, the remainder of the group continued up the street after Nick, following the spray-painted signs leading them towards the safehouse.

 

Before long, and without much more interruption other than one spitter and a hunter who didn't seem to be able to function crawling under a truck, they made it to the safe house.  
  
"Awesome." Francis said. "You made it without dying." he clapped Ellis on the back. "Even if you are all dyed red and smell like shit. There's a drain pipe out the back door, do us all a favor and stand under the stream for a couple minutes."  
  
He grabbed an automatic rifle and made sure to stuff his pockets full off ammo.  
Ellis was by far the least harmed out of all of them, but that was mainly because Francis was so heavily guarding his back. He had to keep his bratty little brother safe, after all.

Louis and Zoey seemed to be the worst off, and Rochelle made quick work of opening a first aid kit and sewing up a deep gash Zoey had gotten across her collarbone when she had been smashed by the tank. "You're going to be just fine, kiddo." she smiled at the younger woman. She took the rag out of a molotov and poured the alchohol onto the girl's cut to disinfect it, at least a little.  


Coach and Louis went off to a corner to discuss something or other and Nick stalked to some dark corner to most likely mope about having to travel with three "faggots."

When Ellis returned, his skin was pink from standing in the hot steam for a little longer than he probably should have and his clothes were damp enough to stick awkwardly to his body.  He chuckled a little and shook his head like a wet dog to dry it, flinging water droplets in all directions.  When he was satisfied with the dryness of his short hair, the hick clapped and rubbed his hands together, looking greedily over the table laden with firearms.

 

“Let’s see here now… AK… no… no… submachine gun… naw… tactical twelve-gauge… Ah do like me a good shotgun…”  The hick reached for his weapon of choice, but froze.  “No fukin’ way!” Ellis exclaimed reaching for the hunting rifle that was laid out of the table.  Is that a M1895 Cowboy 45-70?  He picked up the gun and rolled it over and over in his palms scrutinizing it and checking it over and over.  “It’s a fucking M1895 Cowboy 45-70 Government 9-Shot Lever Action 26” rifle!”  He stared awestruck at the gun putting it up to his eye and aiming it at the wall before lowering it in his hands again.  “Ah had one just like this!  Like this one time, me and Keith went out huntin’ on his neighbor’s land, an’ we saw this humungus buck standin’ out there.  So Ah gawt mah cowboy, and razed it up like this” Ellis demonstrated with the gun in his hands, “an’ just as Ah was ‘bout to pull the trigger, here come’s Keith, outa nowhere with a fuckin’ flare gun!  Ah swear! I was tastin’ that flare for weeks!  ‘Course, it ain’t so much a bad taste… it’s just kind of an –“

 

"Ellis, nobody wants to hear any of your lame-ass stories about you and your dead faggot fuck-buddy." Nick snapped from the corner, his head raising just enough for the light from the naked bulb to illuminate his eyes, glaring coldly at Ellis.  
  
Francis felt his own stomach drop.  
 _Shit, Nick. That was not a good idea._

 

Ellis sighed, lowering the rifle in his hands and turning slowly to Nick, his face too cast in shadows from the brim of his trucker cap.  Nick looked up at him, and his heart plummeted to see the hick looming over him with a dark face and a twisted smile across his lips.  “You just don’ know when tuh quit, do you Nick?”  Ellis’s voice was low and threatening, like a deadly promise.  “How many times do we have to beat the bloody shit out of you before you shut the fuck up?”  With that, the redneck quickly smashed his gun forward, bashing the conman in the forehead with the butt of his rifle and  slamming the back of his head into the brick wall behind him.

 

“Ellis, god damn it!” Rochelle snapped. It was unusual for her, she was usually so patient with the young man. “He may be a first-class dickhead, but we just cant afford to lose _anymore_ man power! He’s an asshole, but he knows how to use a gun. If you kill him, we’re that much less likely to make it out of here alive!”

 

“Actually…” Francis muttered. “We’d be more likely to get out of here with one less person to worry about watching. It’d cut five minutes off every mile, which adds up fast.” He suddenly looked Nick directly into his eyes, letting him know how serious he was. “Keep that in mind, Nick.”

 

The survivors were grim, and that’s saying something in a world where 99 percent of the population drooled blood and craved human flesh.  There wasn’t a word between them from the start, and things were only made worse as the day grew late and rain began to fall until a downpour had all of the remaining seven soaked to the bones.  Looking up at the sky, the secondary group of survivors preyed to any force above that the rain would not turn into the hurricane that had nearly swept them away at Milltown.  Thankfully it didn’t turn any worse; though the farthest they could see ahead of them was fifteen feet.

 

Thunder clapped and lightning struck what had once been a radio tower.  Ellis shuddered as the sounds of a very distant witch screaming in terror echoed like a ghost through the alleys of the abandoned city.

Francis snorted. "Hey Ellis. You think that witch is clawin' her little heart out at the air right about now?"  
Rochelle giggled a little as well. "Nature startled the witch."  


They walked on until they came to a building, deciding to find their way through it if only to be out of the rain for a few moments.  
To their luck, there were shots and pills and med kits and ammunitions strewn all over the floor, as if someone had a decently good camp set up and then had either been dragged away or fled.  
  
"I think we can keep moving." Francis muttered, looking at a clock. "It may be pouring, but it's only 8:00. We have to gain more ground, tomorrow is the last day and we still got about 50 miles to cover."

He didn't bother reloading his blood-soaked semi-auto and just picked up a new one from the floor.  


There was suddenly the shrieking of hundreds of voices and the ground started to rumble.

"Shit, a hoarde." Coach said. "Everyone pick a door or window!"

"I got the back door!!" Francis shouted, pointing his locked and loaded gun at the door that was slightly off-kilter on its hinges.

"I got this window here!" Rochelle announced.

"I got the front door!!" Nick said.

"I've got the kitchen door!" Coach said.

"I got the window next to Rochelle!" Zoey said. 

"And I got this last window!" Louis announced.

"Whut 'bout me?" Ellis whined. "That leaves me with nuthin'!!"

"Get our backs!" Francis shouted. "Hurry Ellis, come on!!"  


In the next instant, they were awash with undead pouring in every opening, barely any making it through with the survivors' practically airtight plan.  
The few zombies that did make it through, Ellis made quick work of shooting dead so no one had to turn away from their door or window.

He was whooping ecstatically, remembering the time that he and Keith took bebe guns to the hugest rat next they'd ever seen in their lives. And as much as everyone hated toadmit it, his optimistic cheering raised their spirits, if only a little.  
Right as the hoarde seemed to reach its peak, Ellis was particularly carefully watching Francis' back, since his door had been shredded to splinters, leaving him more wide open for attack.

They were loudly gabbing about nonsense back and forth, such as "did yeh _see_ that shawt ah just made?!" and "No, Ellis, I'm kind of watching the door right now!"  
  
Just as they thought it was over, a second and even bigger wave poured through.  
And Francis' gun was out of ammo.

He started kicking the daylights out of the zombies that tried to come in his door as he desperately reloaded, and before long he was blasting them away as usual.

But in the next instant, he felt as if he had been struck by lightning.

His body froze for a moment, as if suspended in time. It felt like he was dangling for several minutes, but to everyone else it had only been half a second.

But it was long enough for the hick to see blood pouring down his big brother's back.

And just in time to see him collapse under the rush of zombies that poured in the room.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahaha I forgot how badly this was written, forgive me. This is like... years old.

 

“SHIT! FRANCIS!” Ellis screamed rushing forward to the other man’s aid.  Adrenaline was pounding through his blood without the aid of a shot and the hick shouted furiously.  He smashed the butt of his gun into several of the shrieking infected as he fought up the stream of undead towards hid incapacitate brother.  Losing patience, Ellis opened fire with his cowboy in the screeching horde, downing several in order to carve a path up to where Francis had fallen.  He was particularly angry, not at the zombies however, but rather at himself.  The gun pulled to the left, but that was no excuse.  Francis had shifted his weight onto his right foot, but that was no excuse.  He had been getting cocky.  He had laid a bullet into his own brother.

 

Ignoring the howling infected that clawed and beat at his back, Ellis hunched over the collapsed biker.  “Aw shit Francis! Fuck Ah’m sorry!  C’mon man!  Git up!”

Francis made no move to get up.  
"Shit, man, get out of there!!" Coach bellowed.   
He hadn't seen Francis fall. All he could see was Ellis hunched in the middle of a gigantic swarm.  
He grabbed his shoulder, ignoring his shouts, and dragged him out of the house that had become totally overrun. It was too packed to shooot anything, so running outside was their only option. It was more spacious, and a lot easier to shoot.

“You MOTHERFUCKER! Lemme go! He ain’t dead!  Fuck man!  Francis ain’t DEAD!”  Ellis struggled and kicked like a child throwing a tantrum as he was dragged backwards out of the house by his shirt collar.  The bigger man ignored him and continued to yank him until all the six remaining survivors were back to back in the street huddled protectively against one another.  Ellis didn’t like it, but somewhere in the pit of his heart he knew that if he broke away from the group now, the horde would surely tear him to shreds before he could get anywhere near Francis.

The group emtied clip after clip into the largest hoarde they'd ever encountered.  
It seemed an hour passed of nothing but gunfire, when reality it was only about ten minutes when finally the very last infected fell.  
"Whoo!" Coach said. "That was a doozy! Hey....where's Francis?"  
It seemed as though he had completely ignored everything Ellis was shrieking before.

The hick was crouched beside the fallen body of his stepbrother.  The older man was lying in a pool of his own blood and the splattered remains of countless unidentifiable infected corpses; blackened, diseased entrails were draped across his shoulder and Ellis had to sweep the rotted intestines off of Francis’s back before he felt comfortable rolling him over.  When the downed survivor was sprawled on his back, the hick nearly choked on a gasp; Francis’s eyes were glazed over and rolled back as if they were retreating back into his skull.  Ellis immediately grabbed at his brother’s throat, searching for his heartbeat but found nothing.  “Shit man!” he shouted “Don’t die on me!  FUCK! I NEED CHEST PADDLES OVER HER PROTO!”

 _Screaming....I hear screaming..._  
Francis was jarred back into consciousness when he heard a thunk and rolled his dry, tired eyes downward to see Ellis reaching for a defib unit.  
He weakly grabbed his wrist.  
"You touch me with that you really _will_ kill me. _"_ he choked, his voice hoarse and thick, his throat caked with blood. "Shit, man. Aim. Then fire."

Throwing the paddles over his shoulder in his relief, the redneck instantly threw his arms around the incapacitated survivor.  “Holy shit man! Ah’m so sorry!  Ah thought you was don-fored!”  Ellis released his death grip he had on the other man’s neck, finally letting him take a gasping breath.  “Shit man, how you feel?”

"My shoulder is on fire." Francis choked, turning his head to the side to let the blood in his throat drain out, much to Ellis' panic. "Relax. No internal injury, you just got my shoulder. All that is from bitin' my tongue." he stuck his tongue out, which had a horrid-looking stab wound though the edge, from where his canine had bitten right through it in shock.

Ellis heaved a ragged sigh of reprieve, hanging his head slightly before raising on his feet until he was squatting next to his stepbrother.  “All right… here let’s git you on your feet then…”  Minding Francis’s shoulder, the hick helped to prop him up, giving him a strong shoulder to support him on while he struggled to stand.  “Shit man… Here an’ I though all this time that you was like Iron Man or somethin’ an’ wasn’t nothin’ that could touch you…”

Everyone else was still outside, but Nick had gone towards a window to listen, neither men inside noticing his prescence as he watched Ellis reach for Francis' pulse.  
He hurried back over to the others.  
Francis and Ellis, the faggots.  
He hadn't been too fond of Ellis to begin with, but Francis he could deal with, at least for the time being. And now was possibly his chance to get rid of Ellis for good.  
  
"Guys." he hissed. "Ellis really is infected." he said. "He shot Francis during the attack! I just went over to check on him, and he's in there choking what little life is left in the poor man. We can't afford to let this go on anymore!"  
He grabbed Rochelle's shoulder when she started forward. "Best not to attract his attention towards you. Francis is already a goner in there, no sense in him turning around and attacking you too."

Coach nodded gravely, rubbing the back of his head where his stubbly hair was barely growing back.  “Yeah, I’d believe that… Now that you mention it, when I dragged him out of there, he didn’t seem to give a shit about the other infected, but he was screaming like a man possessed the second I touched him…”

 

Rochelle frowned deeply. "Are you...sure?" she said. "We can't go shooting things into Ellis if we don't know...for sure..."  
"Yeah. I'm sure." Nick snapped. "He _bit_ me, remember? He's choking the life out of Francis! If I get in there in time...I might be able to save Francis. The rest of you stay here, this has to be done quietly."  
  
He crept back up to the building and sat with his back flat against the wall, right next to the window.  
He peered over the sill and saw Ellis' back to him, giving first aid to Francis' shoulder.  
 _Wait until their heads line up..._ he thought, holding his breath and waiting until Ellis leaned over just a bit... _Perfect._  
  
In that instant, a wind blew through the building and made the light bulb overhead sway a bit. Francis caught a gleam from the window and looked over curiously. He was staring down the barrel of a gun with Nick's face right behind it.  
"Shit, look out!" he cried, grabbing Ellis' shoulder and thrusting him to the floor just seconds from the young man being shot in the spine. The bullet grazed the younger man's shoulder, slowing it quite a bit as it plowed into the very same shoulder Ellis had shot him.  
  
The force still knocked him flat on his back, his head thunking rather painfully against the floorboards and making his vision swim.  
Nick cursed and ran back towards the others.  
"I missed, and he's pissed off. Let's get the hell out of here!" he said as he ran back up to them.  
"I'm with Nick." Coach said. "I don't really want to kill Ellis more than any of you, so let's just get the hell out of dodge."

“AW FUCK!” came the hick’s voice from inside the room, making all the survivors freeze instantly.  That wasn’t the shrieking of a mindless infected, that was the cursing of a wounded idiot.  Giving Rochelle another shove from behind, Nick tried to coax her away from the building, but after Zoey put her hand on the other woman’s shoulder, Rochelle wouldn’t budge.  “Wait” Zoey started, taking a step towards the building, “that didn’t sound like a pissed off zombie… that sounded like you just shot Ellis… just… regular old Ellis…”

 

“You can’t go in there!” Nick shouted grabbing for the younger girl’s shoulder.  “What if he passes the infection to you?!  It could be a whole new strain we aren’t immune to!”

Francis cursed as well, his hand flying to his shoulder, spilling blood anew down his chest as he pushed himself into a standing position against the wall. "Fuck." he moaned in pain. "Ellis, that was Nick. He was trying to shoot you."

Following suit, the hick put his hand to she burning slice through his shoulder where the bullet had peeled away a narrow chunk of his flesh.  “Shit man, you gotta be sh-shittin’ me there” Ellis groaned raising to his own feet, “Nick’s mah buddy, he wouldn’t try to pull nothin’ like that on me…”  The door creaked open and both men whirled around to see Zoey poking her head through the doorframe.

 

“E-Ellis?  Are… are you okay in here?”  Her brow was creased with a kind of panicked worry mixed with fear.  The hick tilted his head to the side slightly, wincing as his shoulder gave him a slight pain, but didn’t flinch much.

 

“Yeah… Ahm fine Zoe… Francis’s pretty shot up… now… but uh… he says that uh Ni-“

 

“Wait,” the girl interrupted, “you’re not infected then?”

 

Ellis blinked stupidly at her, scratching his head through his trucker cap and pausing as he genuinely had to think about the question.  He looked down at his arms; they didn’t look grey, clammy and rotten… they looked tan, fleshy and hairy.  “Uh… naw… I don’ think so… why, do I look infected?  Cuz you know sometimes when I twist my leg a little too far tuh the right, it clicks like this…”  Ellis made his knee pop, no longer paying any attention to the girl in the doorway.  “Oh wait… but that’s from this one time me an Keith was tryna make our own rollercoaster out of four-wheelers and scrap wood from the junkyard…”

 

"Nick came to us saying you were infected, you had shot Francis and you were strangling him to death!" Zoey hissed.   
"Well he did shoot me." Francis said. "But it was an accident, I was close to the zombies and he just didn't aim as well as he could have." he gave a good-humored look to Ellis to let him know he wasn't angry in the least. "But Nick would have killed Ellis with that bullet had I not got him out of the way in time. I, on the other hand, am about to keel over from blood loss. He must have thought Ellis was strangling me before when he no doubt checked for my pulse."

Zoey shook her head until her ponytail whipped from side to side; it was simply not something that she could believe.  She knew Nick wasn’t the most trustworthy of fellows, and she surely wouldn’t ever give the guy a loan, but this was something completely different.  “Nick must have been mistaken, there’s no way he thought you were infected…”  She held her hand to her forehead and smoothed her flyaway hair out of her face.  “But he sounded so sure of himself… he said you were _for sure_ infected and we would have to put you down like now…”

 

Ellis shrugged slightly and tilted his head to the side.  “I s’pose everyone makes mistakes.  Maybe he just didn’t quite get  a clear view…”

"He's been getting worse and worse to us." Francis said. "Do ya think maybe he was just saying it so he could put a bullet in Ellis?"  
  
It was a very grim thing to say. But all three of them had been thinking it.

Ellis took a step back and put up his hands shaking them slightly in mitigation.  “Naw, you must be kiddin’ me with this! Nick and me is buddies, why would he have anything against me?  In case ya’ll forgot, Nick’s only got a beef with homos, and I ain’t no queer.”  He gave Francis a sideways look to tell him he didn’t mean anything against his brother by it.

 

Francis pressed his lips together in a grim line. "If you say so. But he hasn't been convinced so far of your not being queer. He'll probably freak if you come walking out, so I'll go out with Zoey and explain everything and then I'll come back for you, okay?"

Ellis nodded and huffed as they left, laying his gun on the table and leaning against the wall to wait for their return.  Francis shut the door behind him, leaving the hick alone with only the fly buzzing at his nose for company.  With his attention focused on trying to swat the bug, always just out of his reach, Ellis didn’t even notice the figure crouched in the window until he heard its quiet snarling breath.  The redneck froze, ice running through his veins.  It was a hunter for sure, but if he knew one thing about hunters, it was that they were like big dogs; they wanted everything to be a sport.

 

If only he had his gun in hand, he could turn around and blast the beasty away, but as it was, his Cowboy was still on the table.  Ellis dared not move, if he didn’t move the hunter wouldn’t pounce, but it would stare him down until he did move.  It was not a risk the man was willing to take.  He had to chance it on the gun, otherwise he was sure he would have to sneeze or something else ridiculous like that and he would be pounced for sure.  It was only three feet after all.

 

The hunter crouched on the window sill, perched like the cat who was about to swallow the canary, and Ellis looked like a rather tasty canary.  There was a break.  The survivor lunged for the table reaching his hand out for his weapon, but to no avail.  With a demonic sounding hiss, the special infected leaped at him with blinding speed, knocking his gun off of the table and bowling him over and sending him sprawling across the floor before the duo came to rest with the hunter’s claws sunk securely into Ellis’s shoulders.  There was a heartbeat that seemed to stand still while Ellis looked up into the mottled grey, disfigured face of the zombie pinning him to the ground, and the hunter seemed to grin down at him with sadistically pointed fangs.

 

"Francis, I know what I saw." Nick hissed at the man who had just been defending Ellis.  
"Well you saw wrong! Cause I'm standin' here healthy as anything! _You_ shot me too, maybe we should kill you for being infected!"  
"I didn't shoot you." Nick hissed. "I missed Ellis."  
"You shoot my brother I will personally grind your face into a boomer's ass!!" Francis shouted.  
Shuddering over that mental image, Zoey stepped forward. "Nick, I saw him. He looks perectly fine, just a little tired and dirty, like all of us. Maybe it was the lighting or something and he looked sort of grey, but Ellis is just fine."  
"I'm tellin' you." Nick snarled. "It's just a matter of time before Ellis turns for good!"  
"If you lay a hand on him, I will kill you Nick, god damn it do you hear me!?" Francis bellowed.

The arguing survivors were interrupted as the earsplitting scream of a redneck in pain resonated through the air.  “AAAAAAAH! OH FUCK HEEEELP!”  That’s when they heard the furious snarling of the hunter that had joined Ellis for a bite to eat.  Their blood ran cold as they each began to pick up on the sounds of the monster tearing into the hick’s flesh like tissue paper.

 

Nick tried to stop them, saying they should just save them the trouble of killing him after he's infected and let it eat him, but Francis did not listen and charged ahead.  
He barelled into the room and silence the monster with several shots all over its body and fell to his knees beside the bloodied and terrified Ellis.  
"Shit." he touched the shallow yet abundant claw marks all over his brother's shoulders, his fingers dripping with sticky blood afterwards. "Hey don't worry I'll fix you up." he said, trying to calm his shaking hands as he pulled his med kit off his back and cut the hem of Ellis' shirt with the little scissors so he could rip it from his body.  
He grabbed a stray dish towel and pressed it against Ellis' chest, muttering soft words of encouragement. "It's not that bad." he said. "They're shallow, not any bone's even showin' you're gonna be just fine, Ellis, you hear me?"

The younger man didn’t reply, at least not verbally.  Instead he sat bolt upright despite the searing pain all over his upper body, and wrapped his arms instantly around Francis’s neck.  Ellis shuddered slightly; he could feel every cut on his body burning until it felt like his skin was on fire, but still he held onto his savior with utmost gratitude.  “Aw shit man!  Thank gawd, I thought Ah was gonna be that thing’s oversized chewtoy!”

"Lay back down, you idiot." Francis said rather tenderly. "I gotta stitch you up, I can't have you dyin' of blood loss of all things."  
Despite his words he gave his brother a quick, tight hug, tears of relief burning at his eyes. He blinked them away, refusing to allow something so sissy.  
But seeing Ellis, pinned beneath a hunter, being torn into...Even if it was only for a split second before he killed the damn thing, he was still so scared.  
  
They both heard Nick from the doorway, where he was leaning against the jamb. "I knew you were a faggot, Ellis." he hissed coldly then walked away.  
"Don't listen to him." Francis said, lying Ellis back down. "Let me sew you back up."

Ellis shuddered and laid back, turning his face away slightly and gritting his teeth as his stepbrother pulled the knife out of his boot and slowly began to slice down the middle of the hick’s shredded shirt.  It wasn’t anything that would offer him any protection from the elements anymore, and it he certainly couldn’t tend to the younger man’s wounds with the shredded fabric in the way.  Ellis let out a long sigh, but made no motion to stop the other man.

Francis stood and rooted through the cupboards until he found what he was looking for. Well, a little better than what he was looking for.  
He smiled and took two bottles out of the cupboard. One was tall and thin and clear, filled with very obviously cheap vodka. But it would do to disinfect. The other was very small and had very clearly never been opened, filled with a brown liquid, which Francis put on the table.  
"Wut's that?" Ellis said curiously, craning his neck.  
"I figure whoever lived here won't have any use for that Jack Daniel's anymore." Francis laid down. "Now the better you cooperate, the sooner I'll get you fixed up and we can open that, kay?"

Ellis quirked a curious eyebrow, only tilting his head up slightly to look up at the other man.  “Are you tryin’ tuh bribe me intuh bein’ good with alcohol?”

 

"Yes. I am. Now shut up and bite this." he handed the young hick the cork from the bottle of vokda. "Better than bitin' your tongue."  
  
He slowly started to pour the clear liquid from the neck of the bottle, soaking into the younger man's wounds and causing him pain.  
Francis pressed the towel against the searing cuts to stop the bleeding again and pressed a comforting, cool hand to Ellis' neck as the cork practically snapped under the pressure of his clenched jaw.

Ellis adjusted the cork, but when it crumbled in his teeth a second time, he spat it out with a pained whine and gritted his teeth.  “Sh-shit man!  I’m not gonna lie... this fuckin’ hurts… Fuck… Francis… Gimme a bullet to bite on you stingy bastard!”  Ellis was shuddering under the feeling of fire sweeping throughout his body as the cheap liquor did its job at cleaning his wounds.  The hick’s bitten and torn fingernails scraped futilely against the floor as he searched for something to grab onto that would ease his pain.

 

Francis quickly fished a bullet from his pocket.  
"Grab onto my shoulders." he said, practically ordered, when he noticed Ellis grabbing at the floor. "Better than scrapin' your fingertips bloody on the wood. Cause this next part isn't gonna feel much better."  
  
He pulled out a curved needle and dabbed the cuts with the blood-and-alchohol saturated rag until they had stopped bleeding a good deal. "Hey, look on the bright side." he said as Ellis' hands found their place on his shoulders. "You're gonna have some damn cool scars."  
He laid into one of the most prominent scratches with the needle, pulling the thread along as he started to piece his little brother back together.

Ellis squeezed at the other man’s shoulders until his knuckles went white and his hands began to fall asleep and still he squeezed harder.  He wheezed past the ammo clenched in his teeth, but when Francis started to work on his third gash, abandoning his arm and patching up the hick’s chest, Ellis screamed quietly past the bullet and fought off the urge to jerk away from Francis’s healing hand.

Francis paused, leaving the needle where it was, and raised a hand with a scrap of Ellis' shirt that was mostly dryish and dabbed away the sweat on his forehead and neck. "Come on, I know it hurts." he murmured comfortingly. "But you gotta let me do this. This is my job, right? Gotta look after my bratty little brother."  
He pulled the hick's hat off so he would cool off a bit as he got a dirty glass and filled it with cool water, which he promptly soaked some shred of fabric in and continued to dab away his brother's sweat. "You let me know when I can keep goin' okay?"

Ellis growled and his pectorals flexed slightly.  “Shut mah,” he mumbled through the bullet in his mouth, “don’ shtof!  Keet goin’ en iddl be don’ fasther!”  The huck groaned and scowled up at the other man, silently demanding that he hurry up and finish the job he had started.

Francis chuckled. "Right."  
  
His own vision started to swim a little towards the end as he finished tying the string on the last gash in Ellis' chest. "There." he muttered. "Much better. Now let's pick you out a shirt from one of this random piles of clothing, okay? It'll at least keep you a little warmer. Then we can open the whiskey."  
  
He got to his feet, wobbled a little, and helped Ellis stand as well.

Ellis spat the bullet he had been clenching in his teeth into the palm of his hand and rolled it over and over between his fingers.  He grinned slightly and held the shell out to Francis.  “Lookie here whut Ah did!  You can see mah teeth marks in it Ah was bitin’ your bullet so hard!”

 

Francis' face flushed hotly and he whirled around. _Biting my bullet? You couldn't have chosen any other words than that you dumb hick?_ he though to himself. _You're so accidentally gay. No wonder Nick is trying to kill you._  
  
"C-Come on." he said, clearing his throat. "Let's get you a shirt." _I'll go nuts if I have to stare at you shirtless._

“Okay” Ellis shrugged, it felt rather like he had been interrupted mid _‘Keithventure’_ and it made him pout slightly, though he had been interrupted so many times he was practically used to it by now.  “Lay one on me.”

 

Those words shot a shiver up Francis' spine. _Ellis you idiot, stop saying things like that!!_  
He sifted through the piles of clothing until he found a shirt he was sure would look good on Ellis.  
"Here, put this on." he said, throwing it to him.  
It was black, and just barely looser than skin tight when Ellis put it on. Though his last shirt hadn't been very loose either. It had a pattern like a spiral on the front, but when they took a closer look they noticed the spiral was made of what looked like gray, flocking crows flying in a spiral.  
"Cool." Ellis muttered, pulling it out so he could look at it.  
  
Francis sat at the table, his head spinning. _Shit. I forgot my own wound._  
He gazed down at the bullet hole that hadn't been sewn shut. The bullet was still lodged in his chest, like a heavy, cold stone. The gun Ellis had shot him with, at such a close range had been a clean, narrow wound all the way through his body. But from the distance Nick's gun had been at, and tearing through Ellis' shoulder at the same time, it had stayed within his body, poisoning him slowly.

Finished admiring his new clothing, Ellis looked back up at the other man noticing he was cringing and staring at the hole in his shoulder with hate burning in his eyes.  Ellis took a step forward, feeling very guilty, mainly because his stepbrother had insisted on tending to the hick’s wounds when his own were far graver.  Ellis ghosted a hand over the bleeding entrance wound, causing Francis to flinch away from the touch.  “Aw shewt Francis!  Why didn’t you say somethin’ ‘bout this sooner?”  He tilted his head to the side and bent over to better examine the wound; eyeballing it like some busted apparatus on a car in his auto repair shop.  “Isat bullet still in ‘er?”

"Yeah." Francis muttered. "It was only a handgun. And it nicked you first."  
He pulled off his leather vest and tore at the little hole in his tight gray shirt. "I suppose I'm gonna have to take this off to get it out, huh?" he muttered. "It's pretty gross anyway, with all the zombie blood and rain water and sweat and shit. I'll have to get something from the pile, too."

“Yeah,” Ellis muttered in a low voice, trailing off as somewhere in the back of his mind a nagging voice was celebrating at the chance to see the other man’s bare chest.  Blinking and looking away, the hick slapped the stupid voice into submission, successfully quieting his thoughts.  _‘Georgia boys ain’t no faggoty queers Ellis, you keep your brains in the right place_ ’ he told himself.

Not too excited about lifting his arms over his head, Francis made a cut in the neck hem of his shirt with his pocket knife and tore the garment right down the middle.  
As the fabric tore apart, it slowly revealed something that first made Ellis' stomach lurch before he realized it was just a tattoo.  
  
The majority of Francis' (surprisingly mostly hairless) chest was covered by a large tattoo.  
The effect of which was very real-looking gashes in his flesh, traveling across his chest and torn also into his left shoulder. Underneath the torn skin looked like black and silvery mechanics, as if he were a cyborg who's outer layer of flesh had been compromised.  
  
"I got it before the whole apocalypse thing." Francis muttered when he noticed Ellis staring in shock. "I wouldn't have gotten somethin' so stupid had I known the world would been overrun by zombies."  
His entire torso was rippled with lean muscles, just like the rest of him, slighty dirty and blood-smeared, but strong-looking nonetheless. He had several intense scars, one right through his belly button that looked like it had been exceedingly painful, as if he had attempted seppuku at one time.  
On his right shoulder was another deep scar, it however looked like a bite mark, as if some zombie had taken a chunk out of him when the whole thing started, almost a year ago.  
Apart from the most noticable ones, he had smaller scars littered all over his toned chest and stomach, even one way down by his hip bone, leading directly into the hem of his pants.  
  
He seemed to be totally nonchalant about the condition of his body as he broke open the bottle of whiskey and took a long drink to help dull the pain.

Ellis didn’t realize that he had been gawking until the other man leaned back slightly and broke the spell that had the hick’s eyes riveted to his muscular chest.  _‘Damnit Ellis! Snap out of it! You’ve said it before and you’ll say it again!  You ain’t gay! You ain’t gay! He’s so hot you could fry an egg on his abs.  You ain’t no faggoty queer!’_   Ellis blinked his eyes as if the clear the image of his stepbrother’s chest out of his mind and shook his head vigerously.  “Shit man… let’s get this over and done with.”

 

Without much hesitation, Ellis dug into his pocket and pulled out a single shell.  Before Francis could bark out a protest, the hick slammed the bullet past his lips and into his mouth.  “Here, now it’s you’re turn to bite mah bullet.”

Francis nodded, glad he could blame the flush on his face on pain and drunkenness if need be.  
He turned his head to the side, trying to clear the images from his own head.  
Ellis beneath him, bloodied, face flushed and writhing. Pain or not, his slim, toned body jerked spasmodically had formed a hot stone in the older man's gut and his nostrils flared as he breathed heavily, taking another long drink of whiskey.  
  
 _Bite your bullet_. he muttered in his head. _Bite your fucking bullet.You stupid-ass._

Ellis inched his way forward until he nearly had his nose in Francis’s bullet wound; he never took his eyes off of the lesion for fear that they might wander if he did.  There was a long pause before the smell of blood made him draw his face away from the laceration, only then realizing how terribly close he was to the other man.  He was standing between Francis’s spread legs and could practically feel the biker’s breath as it hummed past his ear.

 

"What are you..." Francis muttered. "Are you gonna...with your teeth?!" Francis put his hands on Ellis' shoulders. "But...I mean, what if you swallow it? That's not good for you! Or you could just push it in deeper, or...a ton of things could go wrong!"  
His neck was now flushed with shame and yet excitement, as horrid as it was to admit it.

“Naw,” Ellis’s voice was low and reassuring, but he didn’t look up at the other man’s face, too afraid that his own face might betray him.  “Ah ain’t gonna use mah teeth, Ah know that’d hurt too much, but Ah cain’t use mah fingers neigher, that’d just open it up more.”  The hick pressed his forehead against the unscathed skin of Francis’s shoulder.  “Naw… Ah’m gonna suck the ammo outah you.”

 _God damn it, Ellis, don't say that when you're standing between my legs._  
Francis felt a twinge go to innapropriate places.  
"Go for it." he muttered.

Ellis looked away, squeezing his eyes shut tight and furrowing his brows to hide his flushing cheeks; his hands waved in front of him as if to clear away the last thing he had said.  “Naw, naw you gotta understand me here!  It’s like this one time when mah buddy Keith got bitten by a copperhead in his ankle and Ah had to suck the poison out for he lost his foot.  That’s all Ah’m doin’.  Ah’m jus’ suckin’ out the poison is all.”

"By all means." Francis urged. _Do it before I lose it, you stupid man._ he thought. _Suck it all out._

The hick nodded and pressed his lips to the seeping wound, puckered slightly as if he was going to give the bullet hole a kiss.  When his pursed lips met with the wounded flesh, he sucked at it just slightly, flooding his mouth almost instantly with hot, sticky blood.  Ellis grimaced and turned his head and spat out the stream of fluid, though the remains dripped scarlet lines down his chin.  The hick looked apologetically up at his stepbrother.  “Heh, sorry… gawt to git rid of the bad blood first… then it’ll come out much easier Ah think…”

"You've never done this before, have you?" Francis murmured, placing an encouraging hand on his brother's shoulder and rubbing his thumb lightly across the cloth of his shirt. "Go on, it's either this or stickin' your fingers in there. And that'll hurt worse. Just...just do it."  
 _Having your lips against me anywhere...jeez, man, you're invading my thoughts all over._

Ellis gave the other man a sheepish grin.  “Well I suppose suckin’ snake spit out Keith’s leg is a little differn’t than suckin’ a bullet out your shoulder… but how differn’t can it really be?”  With that said, the hick put his lips back to the gaping flesh giving it another good suck and filling his mouth again with blood.  He continued this process several times, sucking out blood and spitting it over his shoulder until finally, something wriggled free and Francis grunted.  Moments later, the redneck looked up victoriously at his companion, the little handgun slug caught between his bloody teeth, the gooey red mess of Francis’s body fluids dripping down his face.

"Don't let Nick see you like that." he said, grabbing a towel off the table and wiping most of the blood from Ellis' neck and cheeks. "He'll shoot you on the spot." He ran his fingers through Ellis' short brown hair suddenly. "Hey, your hair's gettin' kind of long. It looks nice."  
He chuckled when a haphazard grin spread across Ellis' face, the bullet still in his teeth. He couldn't talk very well. "Yes, I remember." Francis said, telling the story for him. "When you and your buddy Keith were playing with the sparklers and he stuck his in your hair and burned a huge patch near bald and you came to me bawlin your little eyes out and beggin' me to help cause dad was gonna kill you, so I shaved your head and we pulled it off as you wanted a new hairstyle."  
  
He ran his fingers again through Ellis' hair, more slowly. The length really was good on him, slightly feathery despite being damp from sweat and rain.

Ellis smiled slightly, though his lips molded awkwardly around the spent ammo in his jaws.  “Yuh… re had shum juud chimes rhen re ras kijs…”  The hick shrugged his shoulders slightly and chuckled slightly, knowing he sounded foolish with his mouth all mottled by a bullet.

 

"Then this whole evil zombie apocalypse shit happened. Course that was after I ran off..."  
he looked down at Ellis, his fingers still absently running through his hair. "I swear...finding you alive...it's the best possible thing that could have happened to me. I could have found a brand new motorcycle all full of gas with the keys in the ignition, and I'd trade it instantly if it meant findin' you. I mean of all the odds...it's just good to have you back, little brother. It's real good to have you back."  
  
 _You stupid, stupid, beautiful man, you._

The hick hummed softly his approval, not able to help leaning onto the soft touch of Francis’s fingers combing through his hair.  That simple feeling, the soft caress, the gentle affection; it was everything he had ever wanted.  Though he told himself over and over and over again that he wasn’t gay, that he was a normal mechanic/ bassist/ rollercoaster entrepreneur / zombie killing machine, there was no lying to himself about how he felt.  And this touch, and the way his body reacted to Francis’s words and caresses; it all felt so damn right.  Of course his hometown community would have never allowed it; never one of their own.  He’d have been lynched in the schoolyard before anyone in that Podunk little Georgia town would have let him be a faggoty dick-loving queer.

 

Somewhere he knew it was stupid to be so wrapped up in the opinions of others, especially now that there were no others with opinions to matter anymore anyhow.  Of course with Nick as the only real remaining exception.  Fuck Nick.

"You look real stupid with that bullet in your mouth." Francis said, his fingers leaving Ellis' hair to take a gentle hold of his chin and raising it just a bit. "Aren't you gonna spit that out?"  
 _I want to see your smile, Ellis. Your goofy, ridiculously happy, optimistic smile._

“Yuh kidd’n?” Ellis mumbled in reply, “sha shooveneer!  Don’cha ranna remember dish day ren you shurvived getting’ shot trice an rivin’ tuh remember it?”  The hick closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side slightly, the corners of his lips turning upward slightly.

His last two attempts at trying to get Ellis to spit out the bullet foiled, Francis just decided to go for it.  
"Well then, it's my souvenier, not yours." he said with a huff and leaned down.  
He couldn't believe his own actions as he tilted his head to the side and pressed his lips against Ellis'.  
It was unreal. Like a dream.  
Warm and soft, unlike how he expected. He was suddenly self-conscious about his own scratchy stubbly beard.  
He pressed in a bit deeper, until he gained access to the stunned hick's mouth, only to pull back seconds later with a little blood smeared on his chin and the bullet between his teeth.  
He spit it into his palm and stared down on the face of the bewildered man. "Hey I tried to get you to spit it out." he said, ready to take whatever consequences would result from his actions.

Ellis was pail for what felt like ages, all the blood having fled his brains and leaving him with nothing going on in his upstairs.  Like a flash however, his heart suddenly pounded against this ribcage like a wild beast and his face flushed so dark red it nearly turned the color of blood.  Ellis wasn’t just red in the neck anymore, but the cheeks, the nose, the chin, the brow, the ears… everywhere.

"You look like a tomato." Francis muttered, trying to get a bigger reaction from the hick. _I just kissed you for God's sake. Say someth_ ing. _Anything. Tell me you liked it. Tell me you think I'm a fag who needs to stay the fuck away from you. Just...tell me something._

Ellis ghosted his fingertips over his mouth where their lips had touched, and he turned away, standing abruptly and wheeling around.  “Ah gawt tuh go… they’ll be waitin’ for us out there…”  The hick snatched his weapon off of the floor where it had fallen and quit the scene rather quickly, shutting the door behind him.

 

Francis sighed, his elbows resting on his knees. "Of course." he murmured. "What an idiot I am."  
He looked at the bullet in his hand and tossed it to the floor.  
 _It's not a memory of living through being shot anymore._.  


%MCEPASTEBIN%%MCEPASTEBIN%


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is like embarrassingly bad. i am sorry.  
> this is like 100% yaoi shit

He came outside as well after pulling a tight dark forest green tee shirt on under his leather vest. "Ready to go." he said to the others. "Everyone's patched up."

Francis gave his stepbrother a wary sideways glance, hoping that he wouldn’t see resentment in the other man’s eyes, or perhaps the will to rat him out to the group, but there was none.  Ellis was calm and relaxed as if the whole ordeal had never happened.  The thought of such an action being so quickly overlooked irritated the biker without end, but in the back of his mind he figured that it beat the hell out of the stupid hick screaming what had happened to the sky.

"Good, let's get going." Coach said as the survivors headed off.  
They traveled for about three more hours, relatively unhindered except for a tank that appeared out of nowhere and a wandering witch that Zoey very nearly bumped into.  
They finally took shelter in an old barn at about midnight after eradicating all the undead and throwing the bodies outside when the rain picked up too heavily to see more than three feet in front of them, lightning crashing every three seconds and re-blinding the group of adults.

Ellis sat in a dark corner of the barn with his knees pulled to his chest and his arms around his legs, resting his knees on top of his knees.  He was curled up and deep in thought.  His mind was like a torrent and he was trying to swim upstream.  He needed a walk like he needed a shower; anything to get the blood flowing properly through his brain.

Francis noticed the young man stand up and wander out of the barn, totally unarmed.  
"That idiot." he hissed. "He's gonna get himself killed."  
He grabbed his brother's gun and his own, rushing out after him and making his way to his side. "You left this." he said. "You'da been screwed if you were pounced again or somethin'."

Ellis blinked at the other man and reluctantly accepted the weapon from him.  “Thanks…”  He looked up, the rain had let up considerably and it was now no more than mist in the dusk.  “Hey, I gawt tuh git some fresh air… you wanna go for a walk with me?”

Francis quickly weighed the pros and cons.  
 _He could drag me off somewhere and kill me for being a faggot. No, that's not like him. He might try to beat me up, or tell me he hates me. I just can't see Ellis telling anybody he hates them, even if he truly does. He'll want to talk to me, that's for sure. Should I expose myself to that awkwardness?_  
  
"Naw." He finally said at last. He was scared. "I don't know if I wanna go. You go ahead, but keep yourself safe, you hear?"  
He started to walk back into the barn when he happened to look back over at Ellis, and saw his shoulders drop. With a quiet sigh, he hurried back over.  
"You know, on second thought, I am feeling a little light-headed. A nice walk and fresh air might do me some good.

Ellis brightened instantly and slung his Cowboy across his back, taking a few steps into the mist before pausing to wait for his stepbrother.  When their shoulders were lined up, they set off walking, heading down a suburban street towards the deserted residential district.  It was nice out, the air was cool and damp and dew clung to their cheeks, but it was nice all the same.  The two walked in silence if only to enjoy the serenity of the night.  “Ah wonder if this means zombies gotta sleep too,” Ellis finally whispered out of curiosity, “Ah mean, they ain’t achually dead, they’s just sick people tuh  begin with…”

 

"Well yeah, there's no such thing as real zombies." Francis said. "If there were, there would have to be werewolves and vampires and ghosts and shit. There couldn't _just_ be zombies."  
They suddenly looked over when the heard a soft gurgling and saw the shadowed figure of a female infected under a bush.  
  
"Is she....fingerin' herself?" Ellis muttered what Francis was thinking.  
"No way, man." he said. "She's probably...got an itch or something."  
They exchanged awkward glances and continued on.  
  
They only got another block before they started to hear the scream of  Hunter.  
A stone instantly dropped in Ellis' gut and he took a step back, but Francis grabbed his shoulder.  
It wasn't a "hunter's about to pounce" screech. They knew that all too well.  
It was more of a...  
"Is that an...orgasm scream?" Ellis muttered once again what was on Francis' mind.  
"I don't think so...it's probably in pain. Let's check it out." Francis said.  
  
They both stalked nervously towards the noises until they started to hear the strangled hacking noises of a Smoker as well.  
They peered around a corner and their mouths dropped open.  
  
There was a hunter, on its hands and knees usual, but there was a Smoker kneeling right behind it and shamelessly, mercilessly, and rather brutally fucking the hunter, its long tongue wrapped around the other infected's neck.  
The Hunter continued to scream again and again, its claws raking at the dirt weakly as its body bounced and jerked in front of the other man.

Ellis swallowed a dry lump that had risen in his throat telling himself over and over _‘you ain’t gay, you ain’t gay, you ain’t no sick faggoty necrophiliac queer Ellis, you ain’t gay.’_ He bit his lip and slowly pulled his gun off of his back, checking to make sure it was loaded before raising it up to his eye and taking aim at the hacking, rocking, groaning smoker.

 

" _Hey!_ " Francis hissed, grabbing the barrel of the gun and forcing it downward. "Put yourself in his position, would you want to get shot right then? They aren't bothering us, let's just go a different way."

Ellis gave the other man a sideways look of disapproval.  “Ah don’ think Ah want tuh be in either of ‘em’s position… Ah ain’t no gay necro-feelin-whatever…”  Taking another look back at the scene, Ellis squinted, trying to avert his eyes from the screwing infected and focus on what he thought might be a pair of red eyes in the corner where the garage met with the rest of the house.  “Is that uh…”  He squinted harder, trying to get a better look without being noticed.  The creature looked up, locking eyes with the hick.  Ellis’s blood ran cold as a cloud passed from where it had been covering the moon, bathing the scene in a pail white glow.  There was a witch hunched over and sitting on top of a metal trash can now with her beady red eyes locked with Ellis’s, but she made no move.  The infected narrowed her eyes threateningly and slowly waved her blood-stained claws as if beckoning the two survivors to leave quietly.  This being done, the witch went back to silently watching as the smoker pounded into his mate, a twisted smile across the female’s face.

 

Francis and Ellis looked at eachother in shock, but when the Witch looked up again and growled at them, they quickly ran away.  
"She was watching." Francis said, stunned as they made haste in the opposite direction. "The dumb bitch was watching."

“Didn’cha hear her though?  She wasn’t cryin’ or nuthin’!”  Ellis shivered at the thought.  “That’s the first happy witch Ah ever saw, but Ah don’t think Ah’d like to again…”  Ellis went silent then for a rather long interval as he thought about the rest of the scene that had played before their eyes; in particular the hunter.  Ellis’s spine shivered as he thought about the cries that were still echoing from behind them, remembering the look of pure ecstasy plastered across the infected’s face, just barely shielded by his navy blue hoodie.  The hick’s face flushed hot and he shook his head as he tried vainly to clear his thoughts, but the sounds and images and feelings refused to go away.  _‘Could that hunter really have been likin’ it that much -? No, NO! You ain’t no faggoty queer’_

Francis put his hand on Ellis' shoulder. "I prefer a horny Witch to a psycho Witch any day." he said.  
They walked on for a while, in semi-awkward silence, until the rain started to pick up once more, as heavy as it was before.  
They happened to be nearby an old boarded up church, so they kicked in the boards on one the windows and went inside.  
It was warm and dry, and a little musky inside, and they piled a few pews over the window so they could have some peace and quiet without worrying about any infected wandering in curiously.

Ellis looked around the impressive cathedral, it dwarfed the church he had gone two every Sunday back before the infection hit.  There were electric chandeliers and stained glass windows depicting nearly every epic of the Old Testament.  Still gawking, the hick made his way up towards the pulpit, pausing only to lift a sliver, intricately decorated cross off of the table and roll it over in his hands.  “Now Ah’m a good Christian boy from the South, and Ah pray to Jesus Christ mah savior and all… but now that they ain’t nobody left in the world… It gets me wonderin’ how much all this really helps?  Ah mean, think ‘bout all the people who used to come to mass here who got turned tuh zombies, and think about Nick… becha he never went to Church a single day in his life…”

"It makes you wonder if the big man upstairs is really there or not." Francis muttered. "If he is, he's not doing a lot of good." He sighed and stood up. "I've never really been very faithful. I've gone to church maybe 16 times in my life, and this whole zombie apocalypse thing kind of nailed it for me that...well, there's no goin' anywhere when you die. I can't imagine an all-loving God would let this happen to his earth. So i figure, if you don't gotta worry about heaven or hell..." he walked a little closer to Ellis. "That you should have as much fun as you can on your way to the grave."

“Life is jus’ all one big party for you, ain’t it Francis…” The hick looked over his shoulder at the other man solemnly.  “Nobody’s gawt any plans for you, you’s just as free now as you was on the road.”  Ellis lifted the rifle off of his back and brought it over his head before throwing it to the ground.  Throwing his arms into the air before the altar, Ellis made as if he was about to let loose with all the fury of a righteous preacher mid exorcism.  “Yes sir, Mr. Francis, your life is mighty fine.  Nowhere from and nowhere goin’… just the how you get there.  You can curse the lord and break his commandments and sleep with who the ---- ever you want.  You gawt nobody watchin’ you ‘cause you’s a free man.”

 

"Don't you dare preach to me, little boy." Francis hissed, shoving lightly against Ellis' shoulder. "Like you wouldn't end up in Hell on judgment day. I know the shit you did, we were kids together, remember? And all thus murder? Hell, you should be in the pews with me!"

“Ah don’t think you get it at all” Ellis growled at the other man, narrowing his eyes and twisting his lips into a snarl.  “The day the infection hit.  Cities fell and people died everywhere.  That _was_ judgment day!  This is hell what we’s in now!  We lost!  All of us, every last one left like normal, we all lost and that’s why we’s stuck in this stinkin’ hell with a bunch of people we can’t stand to be around fighting for our lives!  We are the damned!  Not them zombies out there, they ain’t got half a mind put together to know what hell is with.”  Ellis gave Francis’s chest a good shove with the palm of his hand.  “You’s damned,” he slapped his hand across his own chest, wincing slightly from reinjuring the scores in his skin, “Ah’m damned.  We’s all in hell!”

Francis' eyes narrowed. "If we're already in hell, you have nothing to worry about then, do you, church-boy?" he hissed, suddenly slamming his hands down on the table on either side of Ellis' hips. "You got no reason to keep flinching or cringing or denying, do you? Why, Ellis, why do you persist?"  
  
He growled and suddenly pushed off the table, turning on his heel and storming down the aisle to sit angrily in the farthest pew away.

Ellis craned his neck as he watched his brother stomping off, cupping one hand to the side of his mouth.  “They’s deeper rings of hell than this!” he called after the other man.  When Francis made no motion to indicate that he had heard, the hick sighed and hopped down off of the table, jogging down the aisle towards the other man.  “Hey, did’ju hear me?  Ah said it could always get worse you know…  Think about Nick, he’s about as deep in hell as you cin get without burnin’ alive for all uh forever.  He ain’t got nobody tuh go through hell with…”

"And I suppose I'm going to end up in the furthest depths for having a monogamous relationship with a man, huh?" Francis snapped. "Cause a committed relationship is the worst possible thing you can do in this life, isn't it?" 

There was a long, chilly pause  before Ellis slid into the last pew and sat beside his stepbrother.  He folded his hands in his lap and looked down as if in shame.  “So… Jackie then?”

"Jack." Francis muttered. "He was the head of the biker gang I was in. He was like a doberman on the outside, but once you got to know him, to really know him, he was a kitten on the inside." he let out a long sigh. "He had bright red hair. It was like fire. And bright silver eyes, too. He was pure Irish, through and through, with the accent and everything. Despite being muscular he was pretty thin, and freckled to boot, so he was the last person you'd expect to lead a biker gang. But if you got into a knife fight with him...you'd be dead before you even had a chance to take your knife out, and he wouldn't have even moved half a foot from where he'd been standing."  
  
He ran his hands through his hair as if trying o purge happy memories from his brain. "I thought I loved him. But I guess there are some things in this world that love can't overcome. Mad zombie disease is one of them."

Ellis bowed his head and rubbed his fingers over his own knuckles a little.  “Yeah… makes you real sick tuh think ‘bout don’t it?”  Ellis removed his cap and hung it from the corner of the pew in front of them.  “Ah don’t mean there’s nothin’ wrong with you bein’ with this Jack felluh and all… I’m just thinkin’ it’s gotta make you sick… tuh lose someone like that just so all-of-a-sudden.”

"He was the first Hunter I ever encountered, back before I even knew what they were." his hand went to his stomach where Ellis remembered the large gash across his stomach had been. "He ripped me a knew one, that's for sure. Ran off screaming once he thought I was dead. Some doctor found me and put my insides back inside where they belonged. I should be dead right now, Ellis. My lover killed me. Try walkin' around with that pain in your gut all day, then come back and talk to me about hell."

The hick leaned forward slightly and scratched the back of his head , smoothing his palm down to lay his unkempt locks flat.  He sighed, “Ah do kind of know whut it is you mean though… Ah got a story like that… Not exactly the same, but different better and different worse at the same time.”

Francis twisted his body and folded his arm over the back of the pew, looking over his shoulder at his brother. "Oh? Did your lady friend come charging at you spewing bodily fluids too?"

Ellis sighed and combed his fingers through his hair, trying to calm himself and keep his voice from trembling as he spoke.  “Yeah… only he wasn’t mah lady-friend… You remember Keith…”  Ellis shuddered and wiped his hands down his face as if wiping away his uncertainty.  “Well Ah don’t think Ah ever told anybody this, but when we was young and ignorant, Keith an’ Ah fooled around a little bit… We didn’t know we was breakin’ the good lord’s laws, we didn’t even know ourselves what it was we was doin’ it just felt nice…”  Ellis rose to his feet and laced his fingers behind his head and walked out into the aisle to pace nervously.

 

“Well Keith’s daddy found out ‘bout what we was doin’ and gave ‘im one hell of a woopin’.  ‘Course leave it to me to tell Keith that Ah had real feelin’s for him the next time I saw him.”  The hick walked up the aisle and back as if deliberating whether or not he wanted to go on with his story.  “Keith gawt real scared and started shoutin’ at me and told me it was the devil’s work whut we was doin’ and that Ah would go to hell for it.  Hit me in the jaw till Ah was spittin’ up blood.” Ellis combed his fingers through his hair again nervously.  “Things gawt real awkward b’tween Keith and me after that, but eventually Ah suppose we gawt over it and went back to peein’ off uh billboards on the highway…”

 

Finally the hick sat back down in the pew next to Francis.  “Then when the infection gawt to Georgia, Keith come after me with all yellow eyes and blood squirtin’ from b’tween his teeth, so Ah did what mah instinks told me to… I shawt Keith right between the eyes with mah Cowboy…”

Francis watched him with serious eyes. It was the last thing he was expecting to come out of Ellis' mouth.  
He suddenly had a strong urge to kiss him again, or at least hold him, at the _very_ least comfort him!  
He stood and walked to where his brother stood, and without waiting to hear any protest, he wrapped his arms around the younger man's neck and pulled him close, one of his arms turning so he could cup his hand against the back of Ellis' head, his lips pressing against his hairline.  
He didn't know what to say.   
Hell, there wasn't anything he _could_ say to ease to comfort of losing a lover and  a best friend. If anyone know that, it was Francis.  
  
All he could do was hold his little brother close while the storm of the world raged and crashed all around them.

Ellis shuddered in the other man’s grip, but returned the embrace, wrapping his arms firmly around Francis’s torso and burying his head in the biker’s shoulder.  “Ah sorry big brother” he whispered into Francis’s chest, “Your little brother ain’t no good at hiding whut a faggoty queer he is…”

"Hey if what most hick's say is true, then just hanging out with me being gay most your childhood, you caught it from me. Silly hick, you should know that gay is contagious." Francis said softly and in good humor.

 

“Naw, stupid!  If Ah caught the homo from anyone, it sure as hell wasn’t from you!  Ah wanted to fool with you since Ah learned whut foolin’ was like.”  Ellis immediately regretted having said that; it was one of those instances in which right as the words were leaving his lips, inside he way saying _‘Shit! No!’_ and reaching out after them.

Francis' eyebrows flew skyward as he heard those words and he trained his eyes downward to see Ellis has firmly buried his face in the older man's shoulder once more. "That so?" he said.  
When Ellis shifted his head a little, Francis flinched and groaned. His brother had brushed against the bullet wounds in his shoulder, sending a white-hot flash of pain through his body.

Ellis flushed bright red and looked away, his brow furrowing as he tried to bite back his embarrassment.  “Is whut so?  Ah didn’t say nothin’!  You’re imaginin’ thin’s again!”

"Oh no, you can't play stupid this time." Francis said, taking hold of Ellis' shoulders and pushing him back a little so he could look the younger man in his eyes. "I heard what you said loud and clear, you said you got the hots for me."

Ellis’s face was bright red now, just as it had been earlier that day when Francis had taken back his bullet.  “N-naw Ah didn’t!  You’re just plum crazy!  You must just be tired and hearin’ things in the night is all!”

Frustrated, Francis cupped Ellis' jaw in his hands and looked him straight in the eye. "I heard you." he murmured. When Ellis shook his head again within his palms, the older man rolled his eyes and leaned in.  
He couldn't take it anymore.   
Ellis confirmed it.   
What he was feeling towards the other man...it was reciprocal.  
There was no way he was holding back this time.  
  
He felt a jolt of lightning through his body as his lips met Ellis', a bolt of electricty that opened every one of his pores to the sensation of being pressed against the younger man, his head swimming.  
The taste of his lips, the feel of his skin and of his breath on Francis' cheek and of Ellis' body rolling forward in shock.  
It all drove him wild.

The hick hummed in protest at first, pushing against the other man’s chest with his forearms, but when Francis would not release him from his grip, Ellis let it go.  When finally he settled into the gentle kiss, the southern boy found himself enjoying it; it was exactly what he had been wanting for a very long time, and he felt like he was melting into Francis’s lips.

 

When Francis felt Ellis lean into the kiss, he felt like nothing else could go wrong in the world.  
He wrapped his arms around Ellis' neck, tilting his head a little and moving his lips against the younger man's, kneading them softly, gently, tenderly, one of his hands rising to run through Ellis' soft hair.  
His other hand slid down to hold him at his lower back as he sped up the kiss just a little farther, making a soft noise of satisfaction when he felt Ellis respond.

The kiss was beautiful and soft, but still after nearly a minute, Ellis pushed off of the biker and separated their lips.  “Francis… we… we cain’t be doin’ this…”  The hick looked away and down.  “You’re mah brother man… I can’t… ah cain’t do this… Ah cain’t have these feelin’s for mah brother… that Ah know is wrong…”

Francis grabbed Ellis' wrist and slammed his back against the bench of a pew.  
"Why?" he hissed, looming over him. "There's no more trailer parks. No more judging. No more religion, no more laws."  
  
He leaned in towards the frightened and excited hick, pressing his lips against his ear. " _Ellis..._ " he whispered. " _Sin a little..."_

Francis’s husky, hot breath and his tantalizing whispers sent shivers down between the younger man’s legs and he trembled slightly in the biker’s arms.  There was a brief inner struggle inside the gay redneck, but all of a sudden, he went limp in the pew, looking  lustfully up at the other man, wordlessly giving him consent.

Francis looked down at the face the other man was giving him and felt a wonderful lurch in his groin.  
"Ellis...I've wanted you to look at me for so long." Francis growled playfully. "And now that I can finally see it...I see how poorly I pictured it in my fantasies."  
  
He shifted on top of him, his knee pressing harshly between Ellis' legs as he leaned in and stole another breathtaking kiss.

Ellis immediately arched upwards, pressing his chest against that of the other man and groaning wantonly into the biker’s mouth.  Already the hick was infinitely more excited than any time he had fooled around with his friend, and on the inside, he was pleading for more and more.  Ellis parted his lips just slightly to nibble gently at Francis’s lower lip, begging the other man to slip him his tongue.

Francis did so cautiously, but his trepidation instantly melted away when he felt Ellis' tongue react happily towards his exploits.  
He closed his eyes against the kiss, feeling Ellis' breathless, quiet moans fill his mouth as he pressed on, his tongue swirling and pressing against the younger man's.  
He ground his knee forward between his younger brother's legs, reveling in the feeling of his hips bucking up every so gently.  
  
He pressed one hand against Ellis' abs through his shirt, avoiding his chest and shoulders for now, where the cuts he'd received from the Hunter were no doubt more tender than ever.

Ellis groaned and suckled on the other man’s hot tongue as if trying to swallow the thing whole, moaning loudly as he felt Francis’s stiff, burning groin grinding anxiously against his inner thigh.  The friction was ebbing closer and closer to the hick’s own loins and his head flew back, breaking the kiss so that his mouth was free to let out a long, drawn out groan of pure, blissful want.

 

A shudder ripped through Francis' body as he heard Ellis' voice cry out in beautiful need, his body rocking upward gently.  
He had to contemplate how to take this. On the one hand, Francis could lay right into him, like he'd wanted to for years.  
But Ellis deserved better than that, much better.  
  
So Francis slid his hand up the younger man's shirt, his rough finger tips caressing the hick's surprisingly smooth skin, feel him jerk and shiver beneath his touch.

The redneck whined and his hands few to the other man’s neck and scrabbled their way back until he had a fist full of Francis’s shirt.  Ellis pulled on the shirt as if demanding that it be removed, all the while groaning as the older man’s chilly hands smoothed upwards on his toned chest.

 

Francis knelt up for a moment and chucked his vest to the floor, followed quickly by his shirt, though the twinge in his shoulder when he lifted his arms over his head was unpleasant.  
He placed his hands on either side of Ellis' head and looked down at him lustfully, one hand raising and stroking a knuckle down the hick's jaw.  
"You have the prettiest face." he smirked. "No, really. You're pretty. You have those long eyelashes and full lips...shit, man don't look at me like that. I'll lose control."  
  
He dove in, tilting Ellis' head to the side with his knuckles so he could attack his long, tanned neck with his hot lips, nibbling and licking his way up to the man's ear. " _You make me lose control..._ "

The younger man let out a poorly stifled moan as his hips bucked upwards fulfilling immediate contact between their heated lower extremities.  Only fueling his want, Ellis gasped and arched upward until his back was strained and he was pressing his stomach against the warm, uncovered abs of the biker hunched over him lustfully.

Francis locked his jaw onto Ellis' neck, sucking without restraint as his hand dove down between the hick's legs.  
He rubbed brutally between his thighs, through the thick denim of his pants as his tongue thrust against the little patch of skin his lips were wrapped around.

“AW SHIT!” Ellis hissed through clenched teeth as his most tender flesh was cupped and squeezed and pushed this way and that in the other man’s palm.  His cheeks flared a bright pink color and his bitten fingernails scraped down Francis’s back.  He wanted it.  Bad.  But his jaw was too far locked in place for him to hiss another word, he could only wine with wanton need as Francis continued to fondle his burning package.

Francis could feel the younger man's penis start to harden within his grasp, so he took it as a good sign and continued, rolling and grinding his palm against the cloth.  
He growled impatiently when he felt the shaft twitch and jump to his touch, wanting more contact.  
  
He let go of the wet, red patch on Ellis' neck and leaned back, suddenly heaving Ellis' knees onto his shoulders, ignoring the dull, throbbing pain he received in return and forced the man's button and zipper open, jerking down his jeans a bit so he could see the throbbing hill formed in the hick's boxers.

Ellis’s head rolled to the other side before he looked up at the biker, his face pink and frustrated.  “Sh-shit Francis… quit your pussyfootin’ around damnit! Ah want you to do to me like that smoker was to that hunter!”  The hick groaned hoarsely at the thought and his hips rocked in the other man’s grasp just imagining the actions carried out.

"Patience, Ellis." Francis growled. "If I plunged right in, I'd tear you up."  
He started to suck and nip at the hill between the hick's legs with increasing excitement, rolling his tongue against the mound and wetting the cloth heavily with his hot saliva, sucking the throbbing, wanting organ right through the fabric.  
  
He paused to slip Ellis' pants entirely off his legs before diving in again, smothering his face between his brother's legs as he started to bite and suck his erection harder.

“Shit Francis!  Whuter you doin’ down th- AH!”  Ellis’s fingers gripped tight to the other man’s moist shoulder blades as sweat rolled down his brow.  Any other sounds of pleasure after that were very mottled as the hick’s head spun faster and faster with every new, rough touch his extremity received.

Can I assume you're a virgin?" Francis muttered, shifting his face so he could roll and thrust his tongue against the young  hick's hole through the cloth, spreading his legs farther apart on his shoulders. "Down here?"

Ellis squirmed and bit his lip, rolling his face to the side.  “Aw don’t say shit like that… Ah’m embarrassed enough as it is… just… ah fuck!  You’ll figure it out on your own!”  The hick’s chest shuddered as he let out a shaky breath and squeezed his eyes shut tight.

"I'll take that as a yes." Francis said, lying the hick's hips back down on the bench so he could slide his wet boxers down off his legs, kissing his knees and thighs as he went.  
He stared down at him, pushing his shirt up so it rode past his nipples, pert in the cold and excitement.  
  
He wrapped one hand around Ellis' arousal, pumping hard a few times before he leaned down and wrapped his lips around the head, giving one good, hard suck to see the younger man's reaction to such bittersweet torture given to his neglected, wanting glans.

Ellis squealed and arched his back, his toes spreading as wide apart as they could go.  His ragged fingernails pulled up deep red marks across the biker’s back, but failed completely to break the surface.  “AH! OH MAH GAWD!” Ellis screamed, nothing he and Keith had done had ever felt this good.  Damn Francis knew what he was doing.

Francis slackened his jaw and loosened his throat, and in one fell swoop swallowed the entire heated, thickened arousal down his throat.  
Feeling the throbbing organ rush against his esophagus made the biker's head spin as his tongue worked all around the shaft, his nose blowing hot air across the hick's underbelly.

“AW FUCK!” came Ellis’s raised voice, his head had fallen backwards as his brain struggled to process the feelings surging upward from his lower portion.  “Whuter you doing? AAH!  Damit that feels fucking OH GAWD!”  The hick was writhing in pure ecstasy, his body shivering as his more or less pure self seemed to barrel towards release like a charger on the rampage.

 

Francis could tease the hell out of the younger man later, for now he just wanted to make him scream in ecstasy.  
He started to roughly bob his head, making sure to keep his throat loose so he wouldn't stimulate his gag reflex, and swirled his tongue at every available inch of flesh as it rushed down into his throat.  
  
He let out a deep, shuddering moan as he felt the hick's hips pound his erection down the older man's throat, his voice vibrating mercilessly against the thick rod in his esophagus.

  Ellis couldn’t take another second of it and grabbing at the other man’s ears, forced his head all the way down over his erupting shaft.  The hicks’ release started in the middle of Francis’s throat and shot straight down from there, like the feeling of swallowing hot soup through a hole in his esophagus.  Ellis screamed aloud nothing in particular, just hollering in bliss for its own sake.

Francis smirked and let some of the semen bubble up in his throat just so he could taste it before swallowing it again.  
He knelt up and looked down at Ellis, heaving, sweating, moaning.  
It was the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.  
  
"You sure you're okay with it?" he muttered, his fingers coming to rest on the zipper of his own jeans. "Cause after this no matter how much you wail it hurts, I won't let you go. Not when I've finally got you. It's your last chance to get out if you're having first-time jitters.

Ellis felt like his throat was so tight that he couldn’t respond, instead he shook his head quickly from side to side.  Eventually able to swallow and regain speech, he gasped and looked up at Francis.  “Don’t… don’t say it like that or Ah will get skird!  Just do it ‘for Ah do jump outah here.”

Francis leaned down, not wanting to scare Ellis with the sight of his own fully engorged cock, and kissed him passionately. "No, Ellis." he murmured. "I'm not doing it until I hear you say you want it. I'm not doing it because you say you want me to get it over with before you get scared."

 

“Damnit” Ellis hissed into the other man’s lips, “Ah told you Ah wanted this so hurry up and fuck me you idiot!”  The hick laced his hands behind Francis’s head and pulled the other man’s ear to his mouth.  “Ah want you to give it to me the way that smoker was givin’ it to that hunter…”

Francis chuckled dryly. "I'm afraid my tongue doesn't do that, little brother." he purred, hoping to coax more begging out of the young hick, or at least make him tell Francis to fuck him from behind.

The hick groaned and wriggled underneath his stepbrother.  “You know what Ah mean you stupid prick!” Ellis hissed.  “Ah want you tuh lay it into me the way Keith’s dogs used tuh do to each other!”  He scowled up at the biker.  “Maybe that’s something you remember?  Kind of hard to forget!”

Francis suddenly picked up the younger man and set him on his feet, tearing cushions from several of the pews and throwing them on the ground, lining them up so they would make the floor more comfortable.  
"Then get down on your hands and knees, little puppy." he growled seductively.

Ellis obeyed slowly, keeping his eyes on the other man the whole time, his eyes dancing across Francis’s chest for as long as they could before he faced his back to him and fell to his knees.  When finally his hands joined his knees on the pew cushions, Ellis growled half to himself and half to the other man.  “Ah ain’t no puppy though… If Ah’m any dog, Ah’m uh rottweiler or a pit-bull or somethin’ like that.”

"You're more of a golden retriever." Francis growled, leaning over him, his jeans still clinging to his hips. "And I'm the big mean old german shepard."  
He leaned forward farther, nipping and biting the younger man's neck as he undid his pants with his other hand, his organ springing free of his jeans eagerly and slapping against Ellis' inner thigh.

“Heh.” Ellis tried to laugh a little and lighten the mood, but to no avail.  “Well if Ah’m your little golden retriever, why don’t you give me something to fetch.”

 

"Enough with the dog references." Francis growled and spit into his hand, pumping his shaft a few times to prime it before leaning up and pressing the swollen, red tip against Ellis' twitching anus. Whether it was twitching out of fear or eagerness, Francis could not tell. "Now, would you rather I ease it in real slow, so you can feel everything and adjust? Or do you think you're man enough for me to pound it right inside?"

“Ah don’t fucking care!” Ellis nearly shouted out of frustration, “jes do somethin’ ‘fore Ah do it myself!”  The hick’s shoulders trembled slightly and he groaned , wanting so badly to be connected for real with someone for the first time that he didn’t care how it was, he only wanted it.

Francis nodded and prodded the mushroomed head of his cock past the tight ring of muscle barring entrance to his little brother.  
He instantly hissed in painful pleasure as Ellis' body tensed up in shock and pain, quickly melting into heated arousal.  
Francis hummed deeply. "Buckle up, little boy." he hissed and slammed his hips forward, connecting the two men with all seven inches of his arousal slamming forward and rushing past Ellis' inner walls, creating impossibly hot friction.

The hick’s head bent forward and he groaned loudly at first before opening his jaws as widely as they would go and inhaling deeply, let out a scream loud enough to make a witch shit herself.  “Fuckin’ Hell man!  Take it out!  Why the fuck does it hurt?! My ass is on fire! Take it out!”

Francis leaned in, caressing Ellis' face and kissing his neck gently, trying not to explode immediately as the younger man's ass sucked on him angrily.  
"I told you it would hurt." he murmured, kissing his ear. "You have to relax your body, let yourself loosen up. Before long it will end up hot and wet and you will be unable to contain your screams of ecstasy. Relax your body, Ellis. Put your shoulders on the mat and close your eyes, try to relax. The longer you wait to loosen yourself, the more it will throb, and then it will start to hurt worse."  
  
He coaxed him with gentle, soothing words, having been through this a few times before with a couple people.

The redneck immediately took his arms away and landed on his face in the mildewy old pew cushion; he was ready to do anything to get his ass to stop hurting, hell he would do backflips and drink boomer puke if Francis told him it would help.  He tried his damndest to relax, but there wasn’t much help in it.  He was tense all over with nervousness, fear and excitement.

Francis huffed and reached around the younger man's hips, taking a firm hold of his erection and pumping it fiercely hardm trying to take his mind off the pain, licking and sucking his shoulders and back as he did.  
"Relaaaax..." he purred, wincing as Ellis' ass continued to pulse around him.

“Oh damn…” The hick moaned and arched his back, forgetting for a second that his rear was pinned with the other man’s staple planted firmly within.  “Shit Francis!  Don’t… don’t stop that… ooooh yeah…”

 

When he felt the ring of muscle of Ellis' anus let up on its death grip, he started to move his hips, his organ sliding slowly in and out of the hick like butter now.  
"Mmmhn....there you go, boy..." he moaned. "Nice and loose."  
He groaned, but did not stop his hand ministrations as his hips sped up a bit, trying to get the younger man to enjoy that as well.

Ellis gritted his teeth as he strained to keep himself from tensing up against the unusual feeling.  His voice calmed, finding some eye of the storm where he wasn’t hurting enough to scream, but not loving the feeling enough to moan either.  “It… it feels so weird… is it supposed to feel… like this?”

 

"Let yourself feel it." Francis said softly. "Loosen up your muscles and just let yourself feel it."  
When Ellis didn't seem to be feeling it, Francis grabbed hold of his waist and flipped over so he was on his back and Ellis was on his lap.  
He lifted him up and turned him around so the hick was facing him, and couldnt help but catch a glimpse of his asshole panicking wildly when the invading organ disappeared.  
"Why don't you take control of this for a while?" Francis said, grinding his hips up so his organ slid full against the younger man's  puckered entrance. "It's best to be in this position first time so you can control how fast and hard and deep it goes."

Ellis nodded and took the biker’s throbbing member into his hand and positioned it at his entrance.  The hick was nervous, making his puckered entrance pinch gently at Francis’s head before Ellis grunted and slowly eased himself downward onto the stiff erection.   He felt it alright, but he didn’t know exactly what to make of the feeling, it was hot and shocking, but so far from anything else he had ever felt before, he couldn’t tell if it was good or just strange.

Francis however was in heaven as the hot, wet tightness of his little brother enveloped him once again. He moaned deeply, his voice growling deep within his chest as his hands rose to gently massage the hick's hips.  
"Ellis...how does it feel?" he murmured. "It'll be a little wierd,  but if you're anything like I was you'll get addicted to it."

Ellis swallowed hard and looked down at the other man, sweat already beading across Francis’s forehead from the simple action of being reconnected with the younger man.  “You… promise?”  The hick’s brows were furrowed as he said this as if he was worried that the biker would tell him anything to get what he wanted.  But no; that wasn’t his big brother…

"Of course." Francis murmured, pulling Ellis down into his embrace. "I wouldn't lie to you, especially not about something like this."  
He kissed him sweetly, running a hand through his hair, but meanwhile going wild between his legs. His organ throbbed heavily inside the younger man, pounding along with his racing heartbeat.

Ellis bit his lower lip and nodded slowly.  “So uh… Ah just…”  The hick lifted his hips up so that the other man’s cock slid out of him.  The younger man wined a little bit; it felt like taking a shit to him, not like sex, at least not the way he had imagined it.  “Like this?”  Ellis’s hips rocked slightly as he let himself drop back down onto Francis’s stiff, groaning as the strange feeling shot raw heat through his lower portions.

 

Francis let out a low, sudden grunt of pleasure. But he felt terrible that he was the only one enjoying it.  
He sat up and wrapped his arms around Ellis' waist, trailing hot, wet, tender kisses up his neck. His hands massaged at the younger man's lower back as he nibbled and sucked the heated skin on his neck.  
"Mmmh...does it feel any better?" he moaned, the feeling of Ellis' innermost walls pulsing around him was driving him crazy.

Ellis closed one eye as a trickle of sweat streamed past his lashes while he continued to move his body up and down slowly, riding the other man’s erection but not understanding it.  “It don’t feel so bad no more… but why don’t you take over again… Ah must be doin’ it wrong…”

Francis laid Ellis down on his back on the cushions, leaning in and kissing him deeply as he started to rock his hips forward, his own hips grinding against Ellis with every fluid, gentle thrust.  
He pressed his hands against Ellis' thighs as he prodded gently forward, breaking the kiss to try and get some semblance of a reaction from the young hick.

Ellis’s breath heaved out of him every time Francis pushed himself further inside as if the displaced air in his lungs had no place else to go but out.  The hick’s fists clenched and unclenched on the pillows beneath him as if he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with them.  Without much warning, Ellis took in such a startling lungful of air that he nearly choked.  His eyes shot wide open and his pupils constricted and dilated over and over while his throat strained to scream yet his windpipe threatened to collapse and strangle his voice.

 

Francis smirked. _I must have hit his prostate._ "How'd that feel?" he purred, grinding forward until he felt the head of his organ make circles around the little hard gland within his brother.

Ellis tensed all over, his back arching until it hurt and his eyes slammed shut.  “OH FUCK YES!” The hick screamed, no longer hearing the other man’s voice over the roaring of his own blood and the ringing in his ears as his brain again struggled to register the wave of pleasure that pounded his body.  “OH!  OH GOD!  YES DO THAT!  AH DON’ KNOW JUS FUCK! AAAAH!”

The sound of his little brother's screams ringing through the church made Francis' head spin.  
"Take it all, then." he growled deeply in pleasure. "Take it all."  
  
He started to pound his hips forward, angling them so the head of his erection pounded past that little sweet spot every time.  
He looked down to watch the expression on Ellis' face as his inner most depths were violated.

The younger man shivered and moaned and arched and wriggled beneath his dominator.  He was barely aware of the outside world, it was as if all five senses were being focused on taking in the pleasure that surged upwards like lightning through his veins.  Ellis was hearing sex and smelling sex and tasting sex, all the stars in his eyes were sex and he was feeling sex.  God was he feeling it.

Francis slammed his hips forward faster, groaning and shuddering with unimaginable pleasure that coursed through his veins like liquid fire.  
"Ellis....ahh, fuck..." he moaned. "Tell me it feels as good for you...as it does for me...!!"  
He shuddered as his hips rolled faster and faster, his organ pounding easily into Ellis' loosened, wet muscle.

Ellis rolled his head to the side, his sweat-soaked bangs plastered to his forehead and his mouth sweetly agape to allow the passage of new air and new moans.  “Aw hell Francis! AH AAAH! Ah don’t know Oooh!  How it FE HEEEELs For you! But AH! OH FUCK!  God Don’t Ah YES! OH YES!”  The hick’s thoughts were everywhere and he couldn’t seem to make a full sentence connect from his brain to his lips, but the moans and screams were enough for Francis.

 

"Keep making noises like that...Mmmmhn....damn, you're sucking me in. Hard to believe you're a virgin!"  
Wave after wave of lightning shocked up Francis' spine as he rocked his hips harder against his brother, the wet, sticky sound of their sexes smacking together ringing almost louder than the younger man's scream.  
Francis let out low growls of pleasure, and had to close his eyes to keep the sweat from his brows from pouring into them.  
His hands raised to suddenly pinch and roll Ellis' neglected nipples, to see if he could get any reaction from the little pink nubs.

Ellis couldn’t focus on keeping a hold of himself let alone controlling himself, the piercing screams came as a natural function as he felt his insides tense up.  He groaned and gritted his teeth, it felt like there was a hot spring twisting in his gut like a burning Jack-in-the-Box being wound tighter and tighter until it would inevitably break loose and explode out of its container.

 

Francis felt that same coil tightening deep within his gut, though it was considerably tighter than Ellis' at this point.  
"Ahh...shit...I can't hold on much longer...." he moaned deeply, his eyes screwed shut in bliss. He forced them open so he could look at the beautifully aroused face of his younger brother, rocking and bouncing beneath him.

“AW SHIT FRANCIS!” Ellis hissed from between clenched teeth; it was unbearable to have that much bliss slammed through his body and then be required to speak through it.  The hick’s sweaty hands flew to his own cock and he began to jerk it roughly, squeezing it until his member swelled, full of blood and ready to burst.

Francis slammed forward several more times before he felt the coil tighten so heavily he no longer had a hold on it.  
"Fuck...ELLIS!!" he threw his head back with a roar of ecstasy as pleasure crashed over him so hard he had to fight to stay conscious.  
His release exploded from his body like a firecracker, hot and sudden, splashing deep inside the younger man, pushing inside his deepest walls, staining him.   
He continued to grind and cry out in pleasure, riding out his orgasm with short, forceful thrusts of his hips.

The hick groaned, feeling the biker’s burning fluids shoot deep inside of him and around his inner twists and turns.  The ecstasy of the man above him only made Ellis want his release more, so he pulled on his cock, choking it wildly until his own spring broke free and his hot semen splattered across their chests and decorated Francis’s chin with a drip of white.

Francis' orgasm finally ebbed away as he collapsed on Ellis' chest, moaning and shivering as much as the other man.  
"Mmmm...how was that, Ellis?" he moaned. "Do you mind being a faggoty queer?"   
He kissed the younger man deeply before breaking it to await his answer.

Through his clouded mind, the only thing the hick could think of in his waning pleasure was “shit man… don’t tell Nick ‘bout this… okay?”

 

Francis laughed. "You think I'm gonna expose either of us to that?" he said, kissing Ellis' neck sweetly, his hands massaging tenderly at the younger man's hips.

Ellis wined into the kiss as if to tell the other man he wasn’t finished speaking.  When Francis finally released the younger man’s lips, the hick gave him a sideways smirk.  “Well the way Ah sees it is, he already knows you’re a queer, but he don’ know Ah am, so we best keep things a secret for mah sake… understand?”

 

"Of course." Francis murmured against his lips, kissing him every few words. "I would never put you in that kind of danger."  
He slowly lifted his hips back until he felt the head of his limp organ pull out of Ellis' tightly squeezing muscle with a wet pop noise.  
"I suppose...we should go back, huh? If they wake up and we're not there..." Francis muttered quietly.

Ellis chuckled slightly to himself and looked away for a second.  “Yeah, Nick’d shewt us before you could say ‘queer’.”  Scooting slightly, the hick sat up, wincing as his rear burned under the new pain, making him grimace.  “Shit man… let’s hurry too.”

 

Francis picked Ellis up onto his feet. "Get dressed I'll piggy-back you back." he said. "Then if anyone wakes up I can say the reason we were gone so long is because you got hurt and I was helping you back."

“Aw, how come I gawt to be the injured one?” Ellis complained giving the other man a frustrated and dominated look before folding his arms sternly across his chest.

 

“I don’t know, maybe it’s because you’re the one who’s actually hurt?”  Francis gave the younger man a smirk as he wrapped his hand around behind the hick to give his tender ass a quick smack.

Francis picked up the younger man onto his back. "Keep hold of your gun, I won't be able to shoot if I'm carrying you like this."  
He grabbed under his knees and kicked in the pews, heading out the window.  



	6. Chapter 6

 

They walked for a long while, passing the place the Smoker and the Hunter had been.  
When they peeked around the corner, they saw the two infected curled against the fence behind them asleep, the Hunter curled almost delicately in the Smoker's lap.  
  
"Huh." Francis muttered. "That's almost sweet."  
The Witch was nowhere to be seen.

“Yeah,” Ellis replied, “sweet enough tuh make you hurl, now come on,” he gave the biker a quick jab in the side with his heel like spurring a lazy pony, “day’ll be breakin’ in a few hours, and when day’s a breakin’, they’s a wakein’.”

Francis rolled his eyes and hurried onward, making their way back into the barn where the rest of the survivors were.  
He laid Ellis in a pile of old soft hay, leaning in and stealing a quick kiss when no one woke up to see them.  
  
"For your own safety, I'm going to sleep across the room." he whispered. "I'll see you in the morning."  
  
He gave him a soft smile as he snuggled against a soft bale of hay across the room with his assault rifle pinned tightly to his chest.

Ellis leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head sighing and letting sleep take him slowly while he stared up at the ceiling.

The next morning, there was a thick gray haze hanging over the survivors as they woke up, leaving every one of them chilled and damp.  
Francis groaned as he stood, he hadn't slept well all night, so he was first to rise. And considering everyone else got more sleep than him, he figured they would be fine waking up now.  
He picked up his rifle and headed to the door, pointing it outside and waiting for movement.  
  
And there it was. First movement of the day.  
An undead stumbling stupidly across the yard in front of the barn.  
  
He held his breath, raising the rifle to his eye and closing the other, aimed carefully, and squeezed the trigger.  
 _BANG!!_  
There was a splatter of grey matter and face matter all over the yard as the body crumpled.  
Everyone in the barn was startled awake very abruptly.  
"BOOM, HEADSHOT!!" Francis cheered.

The hick, who had been securely curled into a ball in the hay, nearly jumped out of his skin as the sound of the gunshot snapped all the survivors awake.  Nick jumped to his feet, his eyes still half lidded, and pointed his semi-automatic all around the barn before realizing that there was no threat.  The rifle fell to his side as his arms went slack and he gave the biker an apathetic glare.

 

“Why on god’s green, zombie-infested earth would you do that Gaylord?  Scared us half to death.”

The biker sneered back at him.  
"Oh, shut the hell up, fancy pants." he chided. "He was runnin' at the barn all bloody, what was I supposed to do, step aside and let him in? I saved your life, don't get your panties in a twist."  
  
He slung the gun over his shoulder and peered apoligetically over at the startled hick before looking at everyone else.  
"Last day, people!" he said. "We got a lot of ground to cover, and not a lot of time to do it in. This is _not_ a lazy Sunday morning, you do not have the luxury of taking an hour to wake up. It's time to _move_!!"

Ellis jumped to his feet and brushed the straw off of his body where it clung to his left side from ear to toe.  He dug through the hay to find his rifle shaking it slightly before standing at attention and saluting.  “Reportin’ for duty major Francis sir!”

Francis laughed. "Now THERE'S an attitude you should all have right now!!"  
With his incessant, and sometimes rather annoying cheering, (though Ellis seemed to be having a grand old time since it reminded him of this one time he and his buddy Keith...) everyone managed to get out the door in less than twenty minutes and were on their way.

Strangely enough in the waning morning, there was very little zombie activity, leaving the survivors with a lot of walking time and not a lot of conversation to fill it with.  Ellis was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the awkward silence, his hillbilly instincts driving him to fill the void.

 

“Aw shewt ya’ll! Ah just remembered this one time, me and Keith decided we was gonna go parachutin’, but we didn’t have no parachutes or nothing.  So Keith has this great idea, that we can make our own parachutes out of some tarps and a couple old backpacks his granddaddy got from the war.  We didn’t have no place to jump off or nothin’, so we just got as high up as we could on this water tower by the highway and –“

"Would you shut the hell up about your dead bitch?" Nick snarled under his breath. "None of us want to hear about your stupid adventures with him."  
"Hey, hey, hey." Francis suddenly but in. "So far, I haven't heard a single complete story out of Ellis' mouth. He's desperate to share things with you and all you guys ever do is shove him back down! I wanna hear this one."

“Yeah,” Zoey joined in, squaring her shoulders off firmly and staring down the conman coldly, “let the kid tell his story.”  Nick huffed and grumbled under his breath something about the group of survivors turning into a gay pride march.

 

“Oh really?! Ya’ll mean it?! OKAY THEN!”  Ellis hopped in the air quickly and knocked his heels together before bouncing to a stop.  “So anyway, like Ah was sayin’, we didn’t have no place to parachute from, so we gawt up on top of this water tower by the highway.  Of course Ah jumped off first to make sure it was safe and all, but I guess the wind must have changed by the time Keith jumped down because he started floatin’ up over the highway.  An Ah mean you ain’t never seen nothing like it.  Just as Keith was about to land in the middle of the highway, this humongous semi-truck blows by and Keith’s parachute gets hung up on the exhaust pipe.  Well the driver musta thought he hit a bird or something, cuz he starts running his windshield wipers and stuff all the while Keith is hangin’ on by just this old backpack.  That truck musta drove down near a hundred miles before it pulled over at a weigh station and Keith could finally get off.  Next we heard of Keith, he was callin’ us from Tampa tuh let us all know that he was out of bus fare and was gonna hitchhike back to Atlanta.”

 

"And he survived that?" Francis said dumbfoundedly. "Dangling off the side of a truck? That's unbelievable!"  
"Yeah." Nick growled. "Unbelievable."  
Francis shot him a cold stare.

“Oh yeah! An that ain’t even the worst uh the shit Keith’s been through though.  Ah tell you, that man was resilient.”  Ellis proceeded to remove his trucker cap from his head and crumple it in his hand over his heart.  “God rest his soul…”

The others seemed to simmer down at the sudden serious tone to the story. And although Nick was silent, it was very clear he was thinking, _Thank God the bloody faggot is dead._  
  
The survivors headed down the roads, mostly abandoned, so they made excellent time.  
"Things are a little too quiet." Louis murmured. "I don't like it."  
"Well why don't you throw a pipe bomb? We'll figure out real fast how many there are out there." Coach laughed.  
"Let's not." Nick scowled.  
  
Francis glared over at him. _He's just been getting worse and worse. Is he himself infected? Or just real crabby?_

The hick sighed and slung his weapon over his shoulder, all this quiet was abnormal and putting the entire group of survivors on edge.  They were all just waiting for the next horde to break, and it was making them more anxious and nervous than ever the longer they waited.  It was like walking the green mile.

 

It all started with a low scuffling in the alleys, but before long there was the thundering of hundreds of infected feet like the sound of a distant stampede.  The survivors froze, taking up their all too common defensive position with their backs pressed together.  The rumbling of the many stomping feet ebbed and flowed throughout the city as if the streets were alive with the mutated beasts.  Louis was the first to spot the horde, but not knowing how to react simply nudged Rochelle until she followed the direction his arms was pointing. The horde was rushing across the street, perpendicular to the survivors and two blocks down, seemingly oblivious to the living humans.  Like a flash mob, the screeching horde was gone as soon as it had appeared, leaving the troop of seven even antsier than before.

 

“Uh… does that mean that they’s gone?” Ellis ventured, raising his rifle shakily and looking around.

"I doubt it." Francis murmured.  
He cursed. As if saying those words had summoned the creatures, they started running down the street screaming.  
And the street on the survivor's left.  
And the one on the right.  
And the one right behind them.  
  
They were quite un-strategically placed in the center of an intersection with a hoarde running at them from all sides.  
"SHIT!!" Francis hollered. "I HATE ZOMBIES!!"  
  
He started to fire, just as everyone else did.  
And unfortunately, little by little the survivors started to split up in the hoarde, though Francis tried desperately hard to stay near Ellis, they were simply torn apart.  
Ellis had been jumped by a jockey, and ridden all the way into an alley before he could finally knock the thing off him and shoot it.  
  
Zombies raced past the opening of the alley, not even noticing Ellis.  
But one did.  
Up on the roof of the building Ellis was reloading and catching his breath behind.  
He let out a low growl, then a high shriek as he went flying towards the other man, knocking him flat on his back, his claws kneading at the flesh of Ellis' shoulders, but not sinking in.

“SHIT! HUNTER!” Ellis shouted, taking his Cowboy and swinging it at the special infected and bashing it square in the jaw.  The grey, snarling beast snatched the rifle between its fangs, shaking the weapon like the spine of a victim before tearing it out of the hick’s hands and flinging it.  “FUCK!” Ellis shouted, “Somebody get this thing OFF ME!”

But nobody heard him.  
Nobody ran to his rescue.  
He was too far away, and especially with the roar of the hoarde...  
  
But the Hunter was not ripping into him.  
It was not tearing his flesh off.  
He growled and dug his claws into Ellis' shoulders, flipping him over and peering down at him, low growling sounding deep in his throat.  
His eyes were hidden under his hood, but his mottled grey skin and bloody teeth were visible as his rancid breath puffed down onto the terrified human.  
  
He seemed to grin, his horribly disfigured mouth twisting disgustingly as he yanked his claws from Ellis' shoulders and proceeded to tear the shirt from his body as if it were tissue paper.

The hick froze for a moment before his eyes widened in terror and he struggled against the weight of the infected freak sitting on top of him and pinning him down.  “OH SHIT NO!  DAMNIT I’D RATHER YOU ATE ME ALIVE!”  Ellis clawed at the ground until his fingernails were so worn to the quick they threatened to bleed, and still he struggled vainly to escape the ill intensions of the zombie ready to mount him.

 

The Hunter flung him onto his stomach again, hissing as it dug his teeth into Ellis' shoulder, fumbling stupidly with the hem of his pants. The infected's erection, which Ellis had every desire to get the fuck away from, was pressed against his lower back as the Hunter switched to clawing at the pants, though the denim was stronger than his claws.  
Which left a very angry, very frustrated, and very horny Hunter on the man's back.  
  
He let out a howl and seemed to regain motor functions long enough to yank Ellis' pants off his legs, leaving him naked and cold on the slightly damp ground as the hoarde continued to scream and rage at the scattered survivors.

No sooner had Ellis felt the hunter’s weight leave him for an instant while the beast was removing his pants, than the hick hand scrambled away on all fours, screaming at the top of his lungs as he stumbled to stand and regroup with the rest of the survivors.  “WHERE THE HELL ARE YA’LL SOME HUNTER WANTS MAH ASSMEATS!”

The Hunter screamed and pounced on him, dragging him back into the alley backwards by his ankles, flinging him against the wall.  
He stood over him, his mottled tongue licking at his dry lips as he loomed over the naked human. His erection was visible through his pants, making a large stone form in the hick's stomach.  
  
With another scream, the Hunter lunged forward.  
With that scream, Ellis' eyes shut tight.  
  
 _BANG_  
  
Ellis opened his eyes to see the Hunter crumple against the far back wall of the alley, blood pooling around his body.  
He looked at the front of the alley, where Francis stood, lowering his gun.  
He strapped it to his back and was on Ellis in an instant, pulling him against his chest.  
"Shit. Shit. God, Ellis, I'm so sorry. Fuck, if I hadn't seen you at the front of this alley for a second there...shit, I don't want to think about it. God damn it, I hate Hunters."  
He handed Ellis his pants, but his shirt was torn to ribbons. So he took off his own vest and thrust it at the man.  
"Put that on." he said. "Better than nothing."

Still shaking from the trauma of his near zombie-rape, Ellis struggled to his feet and barely managed to clothe himself without falling over his own self.  Slowly, with a tremor in his hand, the hick accepted the vest, wrapping it around his exposed chest, covering the raw marks where the street had bit at his skin as he tried to escape.  Shivering, Ellis wrapped his own arms around himself as if to shield himself from the cold.

They didn't really have time for comfort, but there was no way Francis was going to allow Ellis to go fight in the condition he was in.  
He pulled him tight against his body again, trying to soothe him, running his hands comfortingly through his hair, seeing as he lost his cap in the swarm, his other hand massaging gently at his shoulder, trying to avoid any old cuts.  
  
"Hey." he murmured. "You're fine, everything is fine, don't worry. I won't let you out of my sight again, I swear. But we gotta go help, and then we gotta get moving. Are you steady on your feet?"

Ellis nodded slowly, hollowly, as if he had gone into autopilot with shock.  Walking much like the lethargic zombies that had always been portrayed on television, the hick located his gun and scraped it up out of a puddle, holding it limply as if simply carrying the thing would protect him from a future attack.  “Kill all sons-of-bitches…” the hick murmured under his breath.

 

When suddenly, Nick stepped around the corner with a deadly scowl on his face.  
"Somehow I always knew it was true." he hissed. "But seeing it with my own eyes is even more sickening than knowing it's going on behind my back. You sick fucks, you're infected with something even worse than zombie disease."  
He spat at them on the ground and turned around, waling away briskly. "The hoarde is over, now if you two are done fucking, we have to get moving."

Ellis, without looking up, quickly slung his gun in his arms, hurling the rifle at nick.  With a loud clattering noise, the gun busted Nick in the back of the head, causing the conman to whirl around to face Ellis with an angry look on his face.  “Wasn’t anythin’ sexual goin’ on in that there alley ‘sept for a fuckin’ hunter tryin’ to rape mah ass, so unless you’d rather Ah sit back an watch when it’s your turn, then Ah suggest you shut the fuck up.”

 

"Fuck you even got the zombies going after your ass now?" Nick hissed. "You really are the biggest fag I've ever had the displeasure of meeting."  
Francis picked up Ellis' gun and handed it back to him. "Just ignore him." he said. "Just ignore him."

The hick grimaced and scowled back at Nick, jerking his rifle out of Francis’s hand angrily before turning to leave the alley wordlessly.

Francis frowned and walked out as well, following not very closely behind Nick as he trudged back to the group.

“Hey guys, watch out for Ellis.” He called to Coach and Louis loud enough so Ellis could clearly hear him. “He’s fucking zombies now.”

Ellis growled and adjusted the grip on his gun as if weighing the option of blasting Nick right between the eyes.  “Don’t ya’ll pay him no never mind,” the hick growled scowling at the other survivors, hating the judgmental looks that were on nearly all their faces.  “Was only a hunter tryin’ to take me in the alley is all…”

"Come to think of it, we saw...a few zombies going at it last night." Francis said, avoiding the fact that it had been two males. "Do you think zombies go into heat or something? I mean, no zombie we've _ever_ come across has tried _that_ before."

Rochelle narrowed her eyes disbelievingly while Louis grimaced and shied away, not wanting to envision the fucked up infected in such a way.   Zoey crossed her arms and grunted as if finding the whole notion hard to believe and still harder to stomach.

 

“I don’t know… It’s possible I suppose, but do we really need more zombies running around?”

 

Coach’s mouth twisted into a stupid looking smile that showed all of his upper teeth.  “Huh huh huh! That would put new meaning behind the term ‘baby boomers’ then wouldn’t it?”

"Regardless, forget it ever happened and let's move on." Francis grunted. "We have to get out of here."  
He did NOT like the looks everyone was giving Ellis. Especially not the looks Nick was giving him. He shot him back a look as serious as stone. _You hurt him, I will strangle the life out of you._

Nick grunted and turned away, keeping his eyes averted from the rest of the survivor group for the majority of their walk as if he let their eyes meet, Hell itself would boil to the surface.  Ellis kept his head down, also not casting anyone the benefit of his glance.  The hick felt more ostracized than ever, and the last thing he wanted was comfort from his older stepbrother; as much as he would like it, it would only cause the shit to get deeper.


	7. Chapter 7

They moved on, street after street, building after building, over fences and under cars in their way, this way and that until they saw the first sign that they indeed were headed the right way.  
Spray painted safe room signs.  
  
It seemed to brighten everyone up a bit and they walked just a little faster, until they came to an area where a building they were supposed to go through had collapsed.  
It was on its side and half caving in, much too dangerous to try and find a way through. It looked like it would collapse on itself if so much as a butterfly landed on it.  
"Damn." Francis hissed, noticing the buildings on either side of it touched the walls, and were boarded up severely. "We can't afford to go all the way around the block and try to find our way back to the signs."  
  
"Just kick 'em in." Coach said, heading for the building next to it and kicking hard against the boards that covered one of the windows until finally they shattered and the survivors could muscle through the splintering wood, into the musky building.  
They switched their flashlights on and peered around.  
There was a man, lying dead and quite decayed, in the main room next to a wall with too much supplies for one man, first aid kits, several guns, a few bombs and even a katana.  
"Nice." Francis said excitedly as he picked it up.  
"Look here." Zoey said, pointing her flashlight to the wall.  
  
It looked as if he had scrawled something on it.  
  
 _There is no back exit. I boarded myself in and figured dying of starvation was better than turning into one of those things. If you make your way up this hotel to the roof, there is a ladder reaching all the way to the floor. And if you are reading this, beware. I think there is a "nest" of tanks on the roof._  
 _God speed._  
  
Francis just let out a long, slow whistle. "Fuckin' great. Well, we might as well get going. If he boarded up the place, then we don't have to worry about encountering any zombies in the whole building, and it's only like 20 stories. So we should make good time."

Zoey adjusted her pistol in her grip, checking to make sure that it was fully loaded before turning back to the rest of the survivors.  “Please tell me I’m reading this wrong.” She whispered giving her friends a worried look.  “It says a _‘nest’_  of tanks… a _‘nest’_ is more than one right?”

 

Nick sneered, casting his flashlight in all directions.  “Yeah, maybe it’s a mating pair,” the conman paused to give Ellis a cruel smirk.  “But OH! That’s right, tanks are only male.  Hmm… Better watch out Ellis, or the big bad gay tanks will tear you a new one.”

Francis could finally hold his tongue no longer. "Dude, what the fuck is the matter with you?! Ellis isn't even gay, you shithead!! I'm the fag here, you leave my brother the bloody hell alone!!"  
He grabbed the man by his shirt and slammed him against the wall, rage in his eyes.  
 _Leave Ellis alone._ his snarl said, without him having to.

Nick’s eyebrows furrowed as his lips twisted into an angry frown, but instead of retorting, or growling at the other survivor, the conman genuinely gulped.  There was a look in the biker’s eye that made Nick shrink away, knowing that any further comment would earn him more bruises and loose teeth than he was willing to count.

 

Francis snorted at him before releasing him roughly and turning away. "Let's get up there." he said. "The faster we get through this building the faster we get out of the city."

The rest of the survivors nodded, excluding Nick and Ellis of course.  Following Francis like recruits after their drill sergeant, they made haste up the stairs.  Three flights up, Coach had to catch his breath and he gripped the railing while heaving for breath.  “Fuck stairs, why don’t they have a god damn elevator?”  The complaint was ignored by the mixed company, and after a minute was spent waiting for the hefty man to regain mobility, the remaining seven again began making their way hurriedly up the steps.

 

The door to the roof was slightly ajar, held in its position against the bitter wind by the crumbling rust caked on its hinges.  Francis grunted and kicked the door open, keeping a firm hold of his weapon, ready to open fire at the slightest wink of a tank.

 

" _Ho...ly...shit..._ " he whispered.  
There were tanks, alright.  
At least seven of them.  
All asleep.  
None of the survivors could even muster a squeak of terror as they looked on at the horrid scene. And they weren't even awake. A nervous tick in Zoey’s left eye that hadn’t shown itself since fifth grade suddenly returned to the girl’s face while Louis bent over slightly, grabbing his gut to keep from shitting himself.  There was a long pause as not a single survivor dared to venture out onto the roof.  Huddled back in the stairwell, Ellis motioned quickly for the others to gather around him.

 

“Okay, listen up ya’ll.  This reminds me of this one time me and Keith went camping in this cave, but in the middle of the night, the bears that lived there came back and fell asleep.  There was three of ‘em, and Keith and Ah had to sneak past ‘em without wakin’ a single one.”

Francis held his hand up before anyone had the chance to silence the hick. "We need to hear this one." he whispered. "How did you do it? Or did you run away while a pack of angry bears chased you?"

Ellis hunched over and put up his hands slightly as if delivering the play to a football team.  “Naw, we gawt out okay without waken ‘em… The trick was we had to take out shoes off so they wouldn’t make any noise and rub bear shit on us like bugs-spray so the bears wouldn’t know it was us, just smells like more bear shit instead of people.”

 

Everyone gave him the same disgusted look.  
It was Rochelle that finally spoke what was on everyone's minds.  
"Ellis...sweetie...not to be a damper but...fuck no."  
  
"There's got to be another way." Francis muttered. "We can just...see how it goes? Or if we shoot them all at once, we might have a chance cause they all try to get in here at once and won't fit. But ahh, no...we need to be out there. Damn it."

Ellis looked dejected and turned away for a spell muttering grudgingly to himself.  “Wouldn’t have to be tank shit… don’t even know if tanks do take shits…  Could just paint ourselves with zombie blood too… zombies don’t attack other zombies…”

 

"Zombie blood...from what zombies?" Nick sneered. "In case you didn't notice, numbnuts, there wasn't a single one in the whole building. Unless you want to walk all the way down to the floor and get all gooed up, then walk back up."  
"Hell no." Coach said quickly.

“Hold it,” Zoey hissed, putting a hand forward to interrupt the bickering.  “I think Ellis was on to something.  Didn’t you say zombies don’t attack other zombies?”  Ellis looked puzzled and scratched the back of his head in that dumb hick way he did.

 

“Well yeah, but Ah was just thinkin’ about why they wouldn’t attack us if we was covered in zombie blood –“

 

“Will you forget the _zombie blood_ , bear shit breath?!” Nick snapped at the hick, receiving a cold scowl from Francis in the process.

 

“No, that’s not the point,” Zoey interrupted again, “the point is that zombies don’t attack other zombies, so…” she trailed off hoping the other survivors would understand.

 

“So…” Ellis thought hard, finally pointing at the girl, “All we have to do is call the horde up here and sneak past while they’s all distracted socializing and stuff!”

 

“What the hell are you talking about?!”  Rochelle gave Ellis a look of disbelief, not able to understand how one person could be so stupid.

 

“Ha, no…”  Zoey was suddenly very serious.  “What he have to do is just make ourselves look like zombies, act like zombies, and zombie our way across the roof… but it will mean you’ll have to take only what weapons you can hide on your person, that means pistols in your pockets and med-kits in your pants.”

"What do you think we are, the local theatre club?" Francis hissed. "What if we dont find any more big guns? We can't make it through the city with handguns, Zoey. We just can't."  
"And I don't really want to stuff _anything_ down my pants." Louis said.  
"Hey...look." Coach pointed with the barrel of his gun to a large pile of dead humans.  
Clearly had been infected.  
  
"Shit...tanks eat zombies?" Francis said. "Well...it's not too far away. I'll go get one and bring it back, it seems easy enough."  
He tried not to retch at the thought.

Ellis grimaced when his stepbrother returned with the festering, white-eyed, black-toothed corpse.  He was beginning to regret having told that story about the bears; perhaps he should have left the part about the bear shit out.  The hick tried not to swallow, knowing just the action would make him gag.  Tentatively, the hick crouched beside the body, and gave it a curious probing with the nose of his pistol.  The corpse practically fell open with just the slightest touch, revealing the putrefying, rancid innards of the half-rotted zombie.

 

"Well, Ellis?" Francis whispered. "This was your idea. You go first."  
  
Pretty soon, all of them were bloody and had innards draped over them in parts. They paid careful mind not to get anything in their mouth. Not for fear of getting infected, but rather because that was the nastiest thing they could possibly think of.  
  
And then they were off, loping and stumbling weakly across the roof as if they themselves were infected.

A rope of intestines was draped over Ellis’s shoulders like a boa made of rancid entrails, but when they began to slip, the hick dared not struggle to catch them, letting them slide to the ground and only emitting a gargling noise form the back of his throat in response.  Rochelle had bits and pieces of slimy flesh in her hair and Coach carried what he could salvage of the corpse’s leg, dragging it behind him as if saving the severed limb for a later snack.  The tanks made no movement other than their heaving breaths as the survivors passed, making Ellis so happy he had to fight off a grin that threatened to stretch across his blood-smeared lips.

They finally reached the other side, taking care to spread themselves out as they trudged across the roof so not to seem too suspicious, and even took the extra time to stumble stupidly onto the fire escape on the other side of the roof, as if they hadn't seen the ledge and fell over it onto their faces, grunting as they pulled themselves slowly back to their feet.  
  
Nick was the last to start loping across the roof, his hands twitching wildly ready to reach for the gun strapped haphazardly to his back as if it had just always been there since he got infected.  
He was terrified, walking tentatively through the sea of tanks.  
It seemed like there were hundreds, though there were only seven, and they were clearly in all sizes, as if they truly had been reproducing and having mini-tank babies.  
  
Suddenly, a Hunter pulled himself up over the ledge on the roof, as if he were there to have some fun antagonizing Tanks.  
He looked forward and locked eyes with Nick, and a simple thought went through his head. _Not good to eat._ and looked away.  
But he suddenly seemed to smell the fear on Nick's body and looked back with a low growl in his throat, his lips curling into a snarl.  
"SHIT!!" Nick cried as the thing leapt for him, and he emptied his entire handgun into it, killing it midair before it could even scratch him.  
  
Everyone on the fire escape froze as the sound of half a dozen enraged, rudely awakened tanks' roars filled the air.  
They couldn't help but snicker a bit as several of the startled tanks tumbled off the side of the roof in their blind half-asleep rage. But they didn't spend much time laughing as they hurried back up the steps.  
Nick was still up there!!

There were still three tanks remaining and they all stared down at Nick, the smallest cocking it’s head to the side as if stupidly trying to decide what Nick was; it didn’t look like a human, but zombies didn’t fire guns.  The second to largest of the brutes snorted, clearing it’s nostrils of pussy mucus so as to better smell the blood-painted man.  The third towered above the other two, by far the largest tank any of the survivors had ever laid eyes on.  Nick took a terrified step backwards.  The largest tank bellowed furiously and hunched forward as if getting ready to launch forward, and that’s when the conman realized that not all tanks were male.  Upon leaning forward, the largest tank’s breasts hung like lumpy, swollen pendulums and the she-tank snarled furiously at the intruder, her tongue lolling from her dripping, crooked maw.

 

"Ew." Francis said as soon as he looked over the edge of the roof.  
"Holy shit." Nick whined, if he'd had anything in his bladder he would have pissed himself. "Guuuuys...guys, shoot it!! SHOOT IT!!!"  
He whipped the assault rifle off his back and started running backwards, shooting madly at the largest of the three, the only female tank they'd ever seen.

Ellis hauled himself over the ledge struggling to stand up before fumbling with his belt.  When he had the thing undone, the hick reached into his pants and before anyone could comment, pulled a shotgun out of his jeans.  Screaming like a furious madman, the hick blasted the she-tank with shell after shell of buckshot.

The tank charged at Nick, bellowing as if she didn't even feel the shotgun blasting at her back, chunks of flesh flying from her body.  
She bashed Nick in the chest with one of her massive hands, causing him to fly backwards, limp on the ground of the roof, rolling unconscious across the rubble.  
  
Heading right towards a break in the wall surrounding the roof.  
He woke up just in time to cry out as he rolled over the edge, his arm shooting up to grab the ledge.  
He tried to reach up with his other arm, but it wouldn't budge. Looking down, he noticed it was totaled, the bone sticking clear out of his arm. "Fuck." he hissed, his hand clawing at the roof to try and get a better grip.  
His feet meanwhile scrabbled beneath him for a foothold as the pain in his chest finally caught up, and he let out a howl of pain.  
His ribs were broken!!

Ellis nearly shouted, he nearly called out to Nick, but bit his tongue to silence himself, knowing the tank would only turn on him.  Instead the hick crouched onto all fours like a hunter and snarled to confuse the massive infected.  In this manner, Ellis scrambled across the roof to his comrade hanging in peril, keeping his shotgun close by, just in case.

Now thoroughly confused, the she-tank gave up on the hick and turned to the other people shooting at her, even more enraged as she watched her two children fall dead.  
  
"Nick! Shit, you're hurt bad, don' worry, we'll fix ya right up!!" Ellis called, reaching down for Nick's wrist, seeing as he couldn't reach for him without falling.  
From 20 stories up.  
  
The view all the way to the ground was making Ellis' head spin, so he focused them on Nick's face, surprised to find him looking enraged.  
"Don't touch me!" Nick spat. "I know what you are, I didn't say anything so your attack dog would stay dormant. I saw you two last night, kissing in plain view in the barn! You fucking sicko!!"  
He squirmed in Ellis' grip, but he did not falter and grabbed at him with both hands. "Forget what Ah am for now and stawp wigglin' so I can at least pull you up!"  
"I'd rather you let me pull myself up, the feel of your faggot skin on mine is disgusting!!" Nick spat in Ellis' eyes, causing him to cry out.  
  
Just then, the she-tank toppled over the two survivors, pushing Ellis off the roof as well, who grabbed at the side of the roof with one arm, the other holding tight to Nick's arm and tangling his fingers into his long sleeve. "Don' worry they'll pull us up!"  
In the next instant, two things happened.  
Ellis heard Francis' strangled, panicked cry of, " _ELLIS!! NO!!_ "  
And Nick's cry of, "Let me go you sick fuck!!"  
  
And Ellis lost his grip of Nick's sleeve.

There was a moment when the whole world stood still.  The only sound was the sound of Nick’s white suit flapping as the air rushed past him 20 stories down.  Then there was nothing.  Ellis looked horrified down at the street below, not able to believe how easily the other man had slipped through his fingers, and now he was dead.  Ellis hung like a rag doll, totally petrified with shock.

He finally came back into focus when Francis' terrified face shot over the edge of the building and hollered Ellis' name.  
He grabbed two fistfuls of his own vest still on Ellis' body and dragged him u without even waiting for a response, pulling him until he was well onto the roof, several feet away from the edge.  
  
"Ellis. Ellis! Snap out of it!" Francis said, shaking the younger man's shoulders getntly and peering into his half-dazed eyes.

Ellis blinked up at the other man with glassy, startled eyes, not coming around until the biker gave his cheek a rousing slap.  The hick shook his mop of hair, soaked with sweat, bile and rancid blood, mashing the heels of his palms into his forehead as if to quell the onslaught of a migraine.  “Shit man…” Ellis groaned.  “Shit, shit, shit man!”  Tossing his head from side to side, the younger man carried on like that for some time before finally the words he never wanted to say slipped from between his teeth.  “Ah let him slip…”

It was then that everyone noticed...  
Nick was not with them.  
  
Coach grabbed the wall of the roof and leaned a bit over, and spotted Nick's body splattered far below.  
"Aw, damn." he said, taking a deep breath and turning away. "Whatever happened...I'm sure it wasn't your fault."   
"Ellis...listen to me." Francis said, shaking him lightly again by the shoulders. "It's a tragedy, I'm sure. But...we just gotta keep moving. Do you think you can get to your feet? Are you gonna be okay?"  
"Nick..." Rochelle frowned, looking over the edge as well.  
  
She had been the only one close enough to hear the biting words the conman had spat up at the poor young hick.  
She was the only one who knew what _really_ happened.

Ellis nodded solemnly and staggered to his feet, making a face of disgust as he tried his damnedest to smack the rotten bits of flesh and curdled blood from his skin and clothes.  “Ah’m fine… Ah… Ah can make it on mah own” the hick insisted in a low voice, leaning over and scraping his gun out from underneath the arm of a fallen tank.  “Let’s all of us get the hell out of this city before we all end up like Nick…”

 


	8. Chapter 8

The survivors walked for a long time with almost no major distractions, save for what seemed like a boomer orgy that they did take the time to utterly avoid, and three wandering witches all wailing down the same road.  
  
They made excellent time, the signs for the harbor said it was only 10 miles away, and it was nearing sunset.  
They technically had until 9 AM the next morning, so there was no chance they wouldn't make it.  
  
"We're close!" Coach cheered and seemed to go forward a little faster.  
Francis had stayed protectively close to Ellis, who was still half in a daze, replying the awful last words Nick had snapped at him in his head.  
Rochelle slowly made her way over to them.  
  
"So, uhh...you two really are a couple, huh?" she murmured. "I was...ahh...close enough by, Ellis. I heard what Nick said."  
"What Nick said?" Francis repeated, looking at Ellis. "What did Nick say?"

“Nick didn’t say anything…” the hick said turning his head away, sulking like a kicked dog.  “Alls he did was slip through mah fingers… Ah don’t really want to talk about it if that’s alright with ya’ll…”

Francis shot a questioning look at Rochelle. "Did he...say something bad?" he muttered to her, trying not to have Ellis hear. He had to know, if Nick said something terrible to Ellis, he had to comfort him!!

The woman looked at the ground and then to her weapon, fiddling with the reloading mechanism to distract herself a little.  “Well… the way I heard it… and I could have herd wrong… Nick said he saw you and Ellis kissing last night and that he would rather die than have Ellis touch him…”

Francis frowned deeply and looked at the the back of Ellis' slumped shoulders, frowning deeper.  
He couldn't go to him now though, not when he so clearly asked not to talk about it.  
He would comfort him later.  
He would comfort him nice, and slow, and sexy.  
Make him remember why it was such a good thing to be a faggoty queer.  
  
He sighed and headed back to Ellis' side, but did not say anything.  
He didn't want to set him off, or make him even more unhappy.  
He just placed a tender hand on his shoulder.  
"Ellis." he murmured. "Whatever happens tonight, tomorrow, or for the rest of our lives. Don't listen to a thing anybody says. Cause all that matters is that...I love you."

Ellis squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to keep his face under control before sighing and letting the stress out of his body.  “Yeah… s’pose Ah love you too… just don’t go gettin’ me all flustered now or anything… we still gawt a jawb to do…”  The hick looked up at his stepbrother and cracked a smile, his brow furrowing upward as if he was looking hopeful for what felt like the first time in ages.

"You guess?" Francis teased with a small smile of his own, wrapping his hand around Ellis' opposite shoulder and rubbing gently. "I mean it, now. I'm not just saying it to make you feel better. Honestly, I'm saying it to make _me_ feel better. Cause...if anything does happen...to either of us. And I didn't say it...I don't know. It would just be awful."

“Yeah,” Ellis sighed, leaning his head on the other man’s shoulder slightly, letting his lips stretch into a wide smile.  “’Cause if’n you gawt munched by zombies, the world would be a lonely place… we’s probably the last faggoty queers on the face of the earth…”

 

Francis nodded and released Ellis' shoulder, making their walking a little less clumsy, but stayed comfortingly by his side.  
They walked and walked and walked, covering the last ten miles in a few hours. It was pitch dark by the time they finally arrived, supplies strewn all over tables lit up by large generators.  
But it was barren. Not a single zombie was there.  
  
"Do we want to make camp and get rested before the final battle?" Francis said. "It's always insane, and we've been walking all day. We would wake up with the sun around six AM, which would give us plenty of time to call for rescue before nine. But it's not just my choice, what does everyone else think?"

Ellis nodded beside him but stayed silent and Zoey followed suite.  Fiddling with her gun slightly, Rochelle looked up at them and murmured her agreement.

 

“Sounds good to me” replied Louis, adjusting the strap that held his med-pack over his shoulder and rubbing tenderly at the bow between his neck and arm.

 

“Coach could use a good rest after going up and down stairs all day,” the largest man replied, stretching his arms above his head.

Francis sat beside Ellis when everyone settled down and rubbed his shoulder tenderly in his palm.  
"Hey." he said. "Why don't you let me change your bandages? They're probably dirty and loose by now, let me fix you back up. I can check on your stitches while I'm at it."  
He looked at him sweetly, pushing a bit of matted hair from his eyes.  
  
God, that face.  
He was totally in love with that face.  
His slightly crooked, plump lips, squared yet narrow jaw, light stubble, beautiful blue eyes...  
God, he was so...just...so...  
He was jarred back to reality when Ellis laughed, and realized he had answered his question.  
  
"Hmm...ahh, what?" Francis muttered. "Sorry...I got...lost."  
 _In your eyes._

“Ah said that’d be great, if you was payin’ attention you mighta known.”  The hick smiled and let out a heavy sigh, his chest aching when he took in a deep breath, but it somehow eased his stress.  Ellis then scooted on his bum and spun so that his back faced the biker, giving him the permission to start on his back and work his way around.

Francis nodded and set to work, unzipping his vest from the hick's body and slowly unravelling the dirtied bandages, frowning as he looked at the cuts underneath.  
"They're turning a little purple." he said. "That's not a good sign."  
He grabbed a molotov and poured the alcohol from it onto a cloth, slowly dabbing at the wounds to try and clean them.

Looking over his shoulder, Ellis grimaced at the sting of the alcohol and gave Francis a wary look.  “Is it a ‘zombie-bruise’ kinda purple or just a ‘regular-bruise’ kinda purple?”  Perhaps all the talk of him becoming an infected had gotten to the hick’s empty head, but he was genuinely starting to worry himself over it.

 

"Regular bruise." Francis chuckled. "But it's a little yellow, too. I think they're getting a little infected, we'll have them professionally looked at tomorrow when we get the hell out of dodge, ok?"  
He tenderly rubbed at the parts of his shoulders that weren't all torn up, trying to ease the knots of anxiousness there.

Ellis grunted and leaned forward, letting his shoulders go slack for a moment before his head rolled backwards.  “Shit man… Ah ain’t gawt a massage since… hell Ah don’t think there ever was a time when Ah gawt a massage!”  The hick rested his palms on his knees and seemed to melt into the rubbing palms.

 

Francis smiled and let his knuckles work down the hick's tensed spine, feeling every knot melt under the tender pressure of his seemingly magic fingers, working away at his knotted shoulders, tense neck and stiff lower back, working him like putty warming in his hands.  
He leaned in and pressed a few hot kisses on Ellis' jaw as his fingers started to knead and press at his lower back, rolling his knuckles against the taut flesh there, then rubbing up his sides with his palms, pressing sweet, hot kisses now to his jaw.

The hick groaned and leaned backwards, his eyes closed and his breathing slowly evening out into the soothing rhythm of comfort.  “Hmmm… Francis… that… that feels mighty good…” Ellis murmured sliding backwards slightly as if melting into the other man’s hands.

Francis kissed his neck again, then his shoulders, pressing sweet, hot, chaste kisses to the flesh before they became longer and just a bit hotter, going down between his shoulder blades and rising against the nape of his neck. His fingers and palms meanwhile moving rythmically, methodically, sensually against the skin of his back, his neck and shoulders, his hips, and every possible inch of hot, tanned flesh in between.  
  
"We're at the bay." he whispered, his lips hot against Ellis' ear, his breath hot against his neck, raising goosebumps all across his back and neck. "Why don't we find us a little piece of beach to spend a few hours on, all alone?"

Ellis sighed and leaned backward tilting his head backwards until he looked at the man behind him upside down.  His lips turning in the direction of a smile, the hick hummed happily.  “I think I’d like that big brother.”

"Then let's go." Francis purred, sliding his hands up Ellis' sides. "We gotta get there, I'm antsy."  
He pulled Ellis to his feet and gave him a quick, deep kiss.

The redneck leaned closer to the other man and groaned, his lips parting just very slightly as he gently nibbled at Francis’s lower lip.  “Lead the way… I’m all yours…”

Francis led him to a secluded little strip of beach, far away from everyone else, where his roars of pleasure and Ellis' wails of ecstacy could not be heard by anyone, even though their voices in the heat of euphoria seemed to shake the very earth.  
They even managed to sneak back to camp, and without Nick to worry about hurting his Ellis, Francis laid the younger man next to him, pillowing the younger man's head on his chest, and his own head in the crook of his arms. He curled his other arm protectively around the young man, feeling his chest swelling with all sorts of emotions that were mostly foreign to him, but filled him happily nonetheless.   
He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, listening to Ellis' even breathing and watching his peaceful face until finally unconsiousness overtook him.

As the sun peaked it’s way over the horizon, its gentle ribbons of light tickled the remaining six survivors awake.  The two lovers slowly uncurled from each other’s embrace, stretching in the warming light of the morning and slowly preparing for the coming battle.

 

They were both much warmer than they usually woke up, and a lot less stiff, their body heat keeping each others' muscles warm through the night.  
Everyone slowly rose and stretched, rubbing the sleep from their eyes and the soreness form their muscles.  
"Let's go people." he said. "No breakfast, not anything to eat anyway. We might as well just call the boat right now."

The other survivors agreed, and it was Louis, surprisingly, who elected to take the radio.  It was an old piece of junk, some old HAM piece of crap from the war, probably used to guide in battleships many decades prior.  The signal was fuzzy, but somehow went through to the rescue workers and a dingy was arranged to be sent to gather the survivors.

 

"You barely made it, guys." said the crackly voice on the other side of the radio. "We'll be there in ten minutes, hold out until we get there. We're not going to have enough time to wait for you, so we'll give you just one minute when we arrive to get onboard. So I suggest you stay close to the bayline."

“We’ll be ready” Louis replied, letting the radio go static for a few seconds before switching it off.  He sighed and rubbed a hand over his dark scalp, finally having sprouted some fuzz on the top of his head after days without a clean shave.  Grunting and bowing his head forward, Ellis removed his trucker cap and rubbed his scalp, inwardly wishing he could have gotten more sleep that night while simultaneously being very thankful that he had gotten to spend what could very well be their last night in hell, in heaven with his stepbrother.

"Well." Francis muttered. "We might as well buckle down. This last fight is always hell."  
  
And right as he said that, as if it were summoned by his words, there was a horrendous roar of rage and the thundering of a tank.  
"Fuck." he slapped a palm to his face.  
They all turned and raised their guns, but they quickly seemed to drop as soon as they laid eyes on the monstrous infected.  
  
"Is that...uh were-wolf?" Ellis gasped.  
  
And it was true.  
It seemed as though animals weren't immuned to the disease after all. At least not this one particular grey wolf.  
"Holy fuck." Rochelle breathed as the hideously muscular wolf came charging at them, on all fours, howling spewing foam and blood from its mouth.  
"A fucking rabies-infested werwolf!!" Francis shouted. "I _HATE_ WEREWOLVES!!"

“Let’s hope it’s not a werewolf, unless you’ve got some silver bullets on you!”  Coach growled, raising his gun in preparation to open fire on the frothing colossus.  The hick beside the largest survivor gritted his teeth and squinted at the monster wolf trying to line it up with a shot between its beady red eyes.

 

“Werewolf or not, lead bullets is gonna have tuh do!”  Ellis squeezed the trigger on his gun, his rifle tagging the wolf-tank just above its left eye.  The beast reared its head backwards and gave a horrifying noise that sounded like the twisting of steel garters and the tearing of flesh.  The wild infected stopped in its tracks, bodily fluids dripping from its ragged maw, a shriveled black spike hanging between the monster’s teeth which the survivors could only guess had at one time been the wolf’s tongue.

"This is fuckin' INSANITY!!" Francis announced, yanking Ellis behind him when the tank locked its fiery eyes on him. "Here, doggy doggy doggy!!"  
He raised his weapon with a cry and started to fire into it as much as every other person, Ellis firing over his shoulder (and making sure not to hit him.)

The wolf-tank let out a furious howl as bullets lodged in its trembling muscles and fur.  The beast charged forward, it’s massive claws digging deep scores into the earth as it bounded towards the pier and the survivors on it.

 

The survivors started to run backwards while they shot, taking turns shooting so that while one person was reloading, two people still fired. In this manner the wolf seemed to slow a little, but not by much as it continued to charge forward, howling like it was possessed.   
Francis cried out as he saw Ellis' foot reach the end of the pier and grabbed his shirt, or rather Francis' vest, and jerked him abruptly back to a solid stand as the monster still charged for them, bloodlust in its eyes.

Ellis’s eyes were wide with fear, the infected wolf bellowing furiously and snapping its jaws as it thundered down the boardwalk towards them.  Foam and bile seemed to drain from the back of the monster’s throat and pour from its maw.  The wolf-tank’s eyes burned red as blood, becoming brighter and more defined as the closer the mutated creature barreled.  Its grotesquely large claws were black as pitch, slicked with blood unknown and tore up planks from the pier with every stride it took.

When suddenly, there was a sickening crunching noise that made a shudder rip through the spine of ever survivor as wood splintered and the monster's foot crashed right through the deck, howling in pain and frustration that he could no long charge at the humans and tear them to bloody bits.

The wolf-tank snarled and snapped and slashed at the offending boardwalk, fighting with all its power to free its forepaw so that its rampage could continue.  The wood groaned, but with a powerful blow from the wild-infected’s opposite paw, the pier gave way, smashing open and freeing the brute’s limb.  The monster gave a terrifying howl of victory, spewing its rabid froth in all directions before there was another loud cracking noise as one of the support beams beneath the wolf gave way.  The thing screeched and belched bile and rancid blood as it tried to stay its balance by clinging to either end of the boardwalk with its vicious claws.  There was a moment when the furious red eyes looked almost terrified as the wolf-tank caught a glimpse of the water below.

"It's afraid of the water!" Francis cried. "Shoot the pier, get it to collapse!!"  
He instantly started to shoot at the boards with his shotgun, blowing chunks out of both the creature's leg at the boards of the pier, causing the hole to crack and splinter wider and wider.

Ellis followed suit, taking to the boards beneath the raging monster’s feet with a crowbar while at the same time Rochelle was beside him, chopping away at the pier with an ax.  The infected wolf snarled and salivated a thick yellow-orange mess as it snapped at the survivors just barely out of its reach.  Coach helped Francis at blasting away at the blanks under its claws, shattering the only thing that was holding the wolf up.  With a screech of terror, the boardwalk gave way beneath the zombie wolf and the creature tumbled a good ways downward, flailing and bellowing in terror before it was swallowed by the ocean in a volatile bath of blood, fur and foam.

When finally the survivor's heartbeats went back to normal, Francis hollered in victory. "Holy hell!! A fuckin' werewolf!! I knew there were werewolves!!"

“Shit yeah there’s werewolves!” Ellis replied, far too excited for his own good.  “An you know if they’s zombies and werewolves, there’s gotta be like vampires, mummies, aliens – all that shit!”

Louis chuckled, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. "I'm even starting to believe this shit!" he said.  
There was suddenly the scream of hundreds of infected, as a crest of them came running into view like a gigantic undead tidal wave.  
"Oh gross." Zoey sneered at the zombies.  
"This is gonna be hell." Coach said. "They're a ways away, we better reload damn quick!"  
  
They all did just that, reloading as fast as their slippery, sweaty, shaking hands could, pointing their guns into the screaming hoarde.  
"Get ready!!" Francis rallied and was the first to fire, shooting down several of the infected with the first shell of his shotgun.

As the screaming horde was bottlenecked onto the pier, zombie upon zombie was elbowed over the edge in the mad dash for the living, sending the squealing brute tumbling into the brine.  The horde crested at the hole where the zombie wolf had fallen through, the infected making a desperate leap towards the survivors on the other side.  Those that didn’t fall short and plunge into the ocean below were quickly picked off by skillfully aimed shots from the remaining six.

Francis grinned as he emptied shell after shell into the oncoming hoarde, kicking those back that got close to him while he reloaded for the others then shot them down.  
The raging, oncoming swarm never seemed to die, and all the survivors knew they would have been completely overrun and torn to bits had the gigantic hole not been there to separate them with the brunt of the hoarde.  
The numbers were massive, as if every zombie within 100 miles had all started screeching and running towards the dock.  
The hoarde made the one they'd seen in that old house seem almost microscopic, but thankfully most of the zombies went screaming into the water.

Ellis left his position from where he’d been shooting over his stepbrother’s shoulder and took out his crowbar bashing in and pushing back the zombies that managed the jump across.  It was exhilarating, and the hick cheered nearly every time an infected crumpled and fell into the ocean with its skull crunched.

This went on for several minutes, smashing and killing and goring and the like, until they finally heard the tell-tale foghorn of a big tugboat.  
They didn't dare turn their backs to the zombies to look and just continued shooting.  
  
The boat grew closer and closer, zombies corpses washing up around the hull. The survivors stepped back a bit in order to get closer to where the boat would dock.  
Then, suddenly, they heard also the roar of a tank and saw it come charging over the hill.  
  
"Damn it, I hate tanks!!" Francis bellowed. "That boat better dock pretty damn soon!!"  
  
No sooner had he said that then the mottled purple tongue of a smoker shot through the crowd of zombies and wrapped tightly around the man's torso.  
Before he even had the chance to scream, he was yanked into the swarm and dragged towards the smoker, and at the same time, the oncoming tank.

“SHIT NO!” Ellis screamed, running back towards his brother, ghosting his hand out after him as if somehow it might reach.  He ran all the way to the place where the pier had been smashed in and stood there as the attention of the horde was distracted by the smell of the fresh survivor being dragged helplessly up the boardwalk.  “Francis!”

"We gotta _GO_ , Ellis!!" Came the loud, deep voice of Coach and Ellis' shoulder was grabbed by the older man. "He's a gonner, too many zombies to count and a friggin tank!!"  
  
Before Ellis could do or say anything about it, he was dragged helplessly onto the boat, dropping his gun in the process.  
  
  
Francis shouted and hollered and kicked his feet furiously at the few infected that tried to claw at him. He was so distracted by the two dozen drooling zombies over him that he didn't even hear the tank coming.  
He was suddenly not moving anymore, and shrouded in a thick haze of burning smoke, closing his eyes shut and hacking loudly, still kicking away the zombies that ran up to him.   
He suddenly heard a low, deep growl and felt the rancid breath of something very large and very angry brush against him.  
  
"Shit." he choked and looked up into the mottled face of a tank, no less.  
  
  
Ellis ran to the edge of the boat screaming as he watched Francis get picked up in one of the tank's massive hands and flung like a ragdoll against a nearby wall, then smashed against the ground.  
Rochelle grabbed him by his shoulder and whirled the hick around, burying his face into her shoulder as tears burned at her own eyes. "Don't look." she murmured.

“GET THE HELL OFF ME!” the hick shouted, shoving Rochelle away.  He was in the first and doubtlessly most important stage of grief, _denial_.  Francis was still alive, even if his heart was stopped and his lungs hung empty, he was still alive and he needed saving.  “We’ve got to save him!” Ellis shouted racing around towards the helm of the tugboat and scrambling up the ladder to where the captain held the wheel.  “Turn this boat around there’s still a guy out there!”

"I saw him, kid." the captain said, he was a middle-aged man, around the same age that Bill had been. "That tank smashed him to bits. His spine is more than likely broken, and his lungs crushed. In the minute chance he's alive, all we could do was shoot him to stop his suffering. He's dead, kid. I'm sorry, but we can't afford to go back."

Ellis growled and gave the man a shove, making the boat veer slightly to the right.  “You shut the hell up! He ain’t dead! You gawt a defibrulater, you let me out on the beach and if I don’t come back with him in two minutes, then ya’ll can go ahead and leave without me!”

"Son, he's dead." the captain said. "There's just no way he would survive a tank. A defibrulator wouldn't help if he's smashed clear in half! We're heading south, and we're not turning back to lug a corpse on board. If you're so desperate, jump out and swim back!!"  
  
Rochelle put her hand on Ellis' shoulder to stop him from trying that. "Honey...I know it's hard. But you just gotta...you just gotta let him go."

Ellis’s shoulders slumped and he turned away in despair taking a few steps away from the concerned hand of Rochelle.  There was a moment when all was silent and the woman turned away, ashamed that somehow they had allowed Francis to perish.  She looked up at the sound of scrambling only to see Ellis dash by.  The hick threw his lover’s jacket off of his shoulders almost instantly, followed shortly after by his pants and his trucker’s cap before he launched himself overboard and dove into the corpse filled waters.

"Damn it Ellis!!" Rochelle hollered. "Get your butt back here!!"  
She turned around to the captain who heaved a great sigh of annoyance. "Fine!" he said and turned the wheel to go after the retreating hick.  
  
They pulled him aboard and went back to the obliterated dock. Ellis was by far the first to hit the dock with his feet as he barreled forward like a charger.  
Francis was lying a good deal away.  
  
When he reached him, his heart dropped into his stomach and his throat closed entirely.  
Francis was lying flat on his back with his arms flung out beside him, his legs both at odd angles. His head was turned to the side and blood was pouring from both his nose and mouth, dripping steadily into a puddle beneath his head.  
His chest was still. His body was still.   
He was dead.

Ellis pelted up the sandy shore towards his fallen beloved, his broken corpse abandoned by the zombie horde in search of a victim that moved.  The hick fell to his knees in the sand by the lifeless body of the man he had loved and cradled Francis in his arms, letting his anguish pour out in the form of tears and screams of loss.  “WOULD SOMEONE GIT ME A GOD DAMN DEFIBRULATOR!” Ellis screamed at his companions who seemed to linger back on beach nearest the boat.

"It won't do Francis any good." Louis muttered to the remaining survivors. "But we should get one just to keep Ellis from dying of grief."  
  
Rochelle brought one over quickly and charged it up. "Alright." she said. "Go ahead, Ellis."  
She knew Francis was done-for as much as everyone else did. There was no getting him back.  
  
======================  
  
 _Where am I?_  
  
Ellis?  
  
Oh god...Ellis...  
  
Ellis, I'm so sorry...  
  
Ellis...  
  
He's gonna die out there without me. He is! And it's all my fault! If I'd seen that goddamn smoker...! Damn it! Ellis...Ellis, god, I'm so sorry...  
  
===================

Ellis snatched the chest paddles from Rochelle, shouting at everyone to stay back, not that a single one of the remaining survivors dared come a hare’s breadth closer.  Ellis slammed the charged defibralator onto the chest of his stepbrother.  The body lurched upwards as the cold muscles contracted when the electricity was pushed through them, but when the hick pressed his fingers into Francis’s neck to check for a pulse, there was nothing.

Zoey whined and pressed her face against Rochelle's shoulder. She couldn't bear to lose another member of her family like this!  
Louis frowned and sighed, turning away with Coach, who seemed to respect the dead man even though they'd barely exchanged two words.  
  
Francis was desperately clawing at his body, but he could feel himself slipping further and further away by the second, coldness enveloping him.

Ellis growled angrily to himself, taking away the chest paddles and recharging them as fast as he could.  “Damn it Francis!” the hick choked through tears, “Don’t you give up! Don’t you give up on me!”  With that he slammed the defib unit back onto the other man’s chest.  Again the biker’s body lurched upwards and his muscles tensed, but the second attempt was just as fruitless as the first.

"He's not gonna make it. He's not coming back." Zoey whispered to Rochelle, who tried desperately to comfort her.  
"It's one thing to lose Bill." Louis said. "And another to lose a best friend, like Ellis did Keith. But to lose a lover...I just couldn't stand it."

“Damn it Francis! Don’t you quit on me!  Don’t you give up!”  Ellis was fighting through his tears to keep his cool, it was the only way he would be able to save the other man, if he was able to maintain himself and concentrate.  Again the defibrillator charged, and with a sickening buzz, Ellis again shocked the other man’s body, the motionless man arched and tensed, but still no pulse could be drawn from his heart, already shut down for as far as anyone could tell.

Rochelle and Zoey stepped forward, and both of them dragged Ellis to his feet. "Ellis...just...just leave him. We gotta get out of here before they drop the bomb. We gotta be out of here, Ellis. We just...I'm so sorry." Zoey said. "I'll miss Francis too...he's a hard person to get used to not being there. But we just gotta get out of here."

“NO!” Ellis shouted, shoving the girl away from him in a blind rage of grief.  There was a heavy silence that followed before the hick realized what he had done.  He bowed his head slightly in silent apology to Zoey.  “Please… ya’ll gotta give me one more chance… gimme one more try… if that don’t work… might as well leave me here…”  Ellis’s eyes were sunken and forlorn, begging like a kicked dog, for help from his friends.

Coach sighed and rubbed his hand over his bald head. "I think we can spare one more time. It's about 8:00, if it don't work...we'll bring the body with us and get the hell out of here."  
"Go ahead, Ellis." Zoey said. "Try it...one more time."

Ellis nodded and returned to kneeling in the sand next to his lover.  The paddles seemed to charge painfully slow, and to fill the gap of time, the hick found himself surprisingly praying for his stepbrother. 

 

“Dear lord, Ah know Ah done the devil’s work on your beautiful earth, but Ah love that man, and Ah’d be forever grateful if you could send him back to me.”

 

The hick took in a deep breath and pressed the paddles against Francis’s skin, one last time.

In that instant, as if God had heard, all of Francis' clawing at his body seemed to work.  
There was a rush of pain, agonizing pain, and a shocking feeling of being torn limb from limb and then pushed back together all in a rush.  
  
He came spluttering back into his body, taking in a rush f breath so fast he choked on it, his heart racing madly in his chest, his eyes bulging out of his skull as blood poured out of his throat.  
He moaned weakly as his head spun nauseously, and turned over on his side to abruptly vomit.  
He didn't know what was going on, or what had happened, he didn't even remember being dead. All he knew was he was about ready to split apart with pain.

Ignoring Francis’s moans of pain and nausea, Ellis immediately scooped the other man into his arms, aided by a rush of adrenaline at seeing him moving and breathing again.  The hick ran back to the boat as quickly as he could with his stepbrother hanging limply in his arms and crying out in pain.  Ellis didn’t say a word as he passed the other survivors, there was no ‘ha ha’s or ‘Ah told you so’s,  the redneck only dashed up onto the deck as fast as he could.

 

When the other man was laid safely on the deck of the boat, Ellis removed his trucker cap and held it over his heart.  Looking up at the sky, he murmured quietly.  “Much obliged.”

Everyone didn't even have enough time to be startled as they watched the hick run by.They quickly jumped to their feet and hurried onto the boat, which took off just moments later.  
  
Francis was shivering in pain, colors and sights and sounds all swirling in his head into a nauseating mess.  
Snot and saliva and blood was running down his face as his spine seared with pain. He couldn't even think coherently long enough to wonder whether anything was broken, or where he was, or who hat bleary figure was in front of him for that matter.  
  
He vomited on the deck again and moaned weakly as his old body started to convulse in wracking pain.

Ellis was there in an instant, wiping the blood and bile from his lover’s face, earning another pained groan form the injured man.  The hick went to work promptly, not waiting for consent or any reply, cleaning and bandaging the outer wounds on his lover while using what he could to brace his broken bones until a decent doctor could be reached.

Finally, the biker's head started to level out and his vision started to even out. Ellis' face came into focus, and amidst all the searing, burning pain, Francis managed to reach out and jerk the hick down into his arms, hurried, pained sobs wracking his broken body.  
He wasn't even totally conscious about where he was or what was happening, but he knew Ellis was alive, and had come back for him.

Taken by surprise for a moment, Ellis finally returned the embrace.  The hick was also finding it hard to believe that after all that, Francis was still alive; not only that, but he was still alive and in his arms, holding him close like he would never let go.  In the bit of his heart, Ellis wished that they would never let go.

"God..." Francis moaned, pressing the hick tighter in his arms. "I'm so sorry...I saw you...the look on your face...you looked so scared...I never want you to have to go through that again. We'll get to a human city, and you and me...we'll grow some roots."  
He pulled the hick away and ran his hands against his face, looking him in his eyes. "Just you and I. We'll get a place together, and I'll be yours and you'll be mine, and there won't be anymore of this zombie crap. You'll be mine to protect, to love, to always love."  
  
He was babbling, he didn't even know what was coming out of his mouth. He wasn't a very romantic man, but he felt the need to pour out every bit of his heart to the sobbing brunette between his legs. "I love you, Ellis. Fuck, I love you."

Ellis smiled down at the other man, tears sparkling in his eyes and threatening to spill over onto Francis’s face.  His lips trembled slightly at the prospect, it was like he had always dreamed, always fanaticized, but it was real, so real he could touch it.  “Likewise…”  It was as much as he could say without choking on the suppressed sobs that were so near to jumping from his throat he had to strain his tongue to keep them down.

"We'll get a little place, and we'll plant a tree, okay? We'll help make this world right again, and we'll never see another zombie as long as we live. Okay? We'll give a tree roots and watch it get bigger as we live there longer. It's stupid, and it's corny, but fuck it we'll make it work!!"  
He pressed his forehead against Ellis' and took in a deep breath, "We'll make it work. We'll watch it grow. And you will be mine."


End file.
